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hitlikehammers · 4 months

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'who did this to you?' established Steddie, post-S4 🖤💙💜

The bruising’s stark, like footprints on new-fallen snow punished through to the long-dead grass. It draws the eye, insistent; screams to be seen:

“Who did this to you?”

Steve’s eyes are bright, voice low even as he delicately moves Eddie’s stretched-low collar to follow the line of broken vessels near the surface, a few stray snags of already rusty red, lines that follow the trails of mottled purple-blue. Steve smoothes barely a touch from the pad of his thumb just below the marks to trace them where they color neck to chin, up to the silver-light scarring on his face.

And honestly: it’s a ritual almost, now. But, like, it’s so different from how it used to be. Or even how it was before that, before them at all.

Before things ever ended like this.

“Names, babydoll,” Steve coaxes, but demands all the same; he’s learned over time not to bring the full weight of his steel to the fore in every moment—the resolute promise in his bones to protect Eddie at all costs doesn’t disappear, maybe does the opposite even, maybe just grows strong as what they have has grown, too; but it doesn’t burn so bright when it’s expressed in Eddie’s vicinity. Maybe to spare him.

Maybe as a strategic move on Steve’s part, who’s maybe finally learned that if he’s going to go beat the shit out of anyone, he should one-hundred-percent not let his boyfriend or his platonic soulmate—or also Wayne—about it in advance. So:

“Sweetness,” he nuzzles carefully, where Eddie’s skin’s not water-colored in burst-blood; “give me names.”

“Mmm,” Eddie hums, so easily softened and lulled by Steve’s careful adoration, the way he rubs his nose, his cheek against Eddie and just breathes—it carries Eddie into a soft, comfortable space always, no matter what’s happened; no matter what’s been done.

“Don’t have to,” Eddie sighs out, kinda pathetically desperate in how he leans into Steve’s…just Steve. Steve-Steve-Steve. So he just kinda sighs, because…Steve.

“You know damn well who it was.”

“Don’t play coy,” Steve warns, though its airy, diaphanous, even though Steve doesn’t stop for a second from nuzzling into Eddie’s skin; even but Eddie knows better than to entangle Steve’s softness for Eddie with his broader intentions, the heat behind his words, and the ultimate question:

“Who,” and Steve’s breathe so hot, so close to Eddie’s ear as he whispers, sends fucking shivers down Eddie’s spine; “did this,” and then he’s leaning to run his mouth back along the bruising, the damning trail of damage: “to you?”

“Steve,” Eddie sighs, can’t help but crane his neck to Steve’s careful attention, almost cataloging of the dark splotching, and Eddie can’t help it, it’s not like it even hurts, not really, Eddie knows hurting—

He’s not weird if he kinda feels like most hurting’s worth the high of Steve’s tender care like this, the buzzing flame-like licking across his skin.

Steve doesn’t even make contact with where it could even possibly sting, but fuck if it doesn’t make Eddie light up wild from the pit of his belly.

And fuck if Steve doesn’t know it.

“Mmm-nope,” Steve pulls himself back when Eddie’s reckless, lets out a full-ass fucking moan. “No distracting me,” Steve bites with a glare before he catches Eddie’s gaze and looks down pointedly, points so only the whisper of his touch follows the trail:

“Who did this,” and Eddie is weak, he’s weak because he shivers and when Steve draws his barely-a-touch back, away, he whines. Fuck, yes: he whines, Jesus.

Weak, you understand?

Also, if you don’t understand: fuck you. Eddie would like to see anyone—man, woman, or otherwise—do any better.

“You know,” Eddie keeps with the whining, Jesus fuck, seriously: “I said”

“I think mostly you’ve made noises.”

“Steve,” Eddie…does not break his whining streak. He’s tight in his thighs, and it’s not…he’s gonna need to address that soon.

He’s gonna need someone to address that for him, really.

“Hmm?” Steve leans in, and for the first time he does touch the bruises, tastes them on the flat of his tongue with barely any pressure like he’s collecting evidence, searing proof into his own flesh.

“What’s that now?”

“Steve.”

And he tilts his head at his name, which is less of a whine now—win—but breathy as fuck, still. It’s a process.

“Who did this to you, baby?” Steve asks, eyes wide, innocent and encouraging now as he pulls back and buries his hands in Eddie’s mess of curls, massages as his temples, his scalp.

Fucking dirty pool, right there.

“Steve,” Eddie bites out. Like literally bites his tongue as his head tips back, inescapable for the perfect circles being traced across his head; “Harrington.”

And yes: soon as he gets the words out, the name in full, he stops fighting how just Steve Harrington’s hands are deciding to undo him, this time.

“Hmm, sounds familiar,” Steve hums a little, clicks his tongue and bites a bit at his lip; “but you say it so soft, sweetheart, like maybe you’re hesitant or somethin’,” Steve shakes his head, and tips Eddie’s face toward him a little more full-on, thumb on Eddie’s subtly swollen lower lip:

“Are you one-hundred-percent sure?”

“Absotively posolutely,” Eddie enunciates carefully, never breaking eye contact as he lets his tongue flick out to Steve’s touch and watches those pupils dilate quick to drown that hazel gaze.

“No doubt in your mind?” Steve pushes, relentless, but leans in, leans to breath open mouthed against each bruise:

“Only one,” Eddie sighs, and maybe it sounds frustrated, over the interrogating but hell if he can be over any single goddamn thing about this man.

And it’s the truth. There’s no evidence but Eddie knows Steve leaves his trusty bat at a different angle against the wall the days after Eddie so much as mentions being hassled, or only just slipping the asshats looking to resurrect Jason’s pursuit—the coincidence of every single threat disappearing, suddenly keeping the eyes on the ground if they pass Eddie by, changing course overnight when the bat shifts ever so slightly?

Eddie’d be more concerned, if there was ever any real damage to Steve in response, but in reality he only ever went to put the fear of god in those assholes, he swears he’s never even let a single one of them move quick enough to even try to pull anything on him in return, and well.

Hop doesn’t condone it but he never works too hard to find evidence, and Steve never does anything the technically breaks any obvious laws, so. Eddie thinks it’s Hopper’s way of showing he cares.

But then there’s…this.

There are mornings, like this, when Eddie wakes with bruises around his neck like a chain, a heavy one in the center of his chest like a pendant, little red dashes here and there, barely visible but particular points of interest for Steve when he wakes Eddie up with gentle but unceasing kisses where the bruising doesn’t survive the night so bright, so tender, sucks the blood back up to Eddie lips and leaves them gorgeously numb before he inspect the purple marks: perfectly shaped to his lips.

The tiny red marks perfectly lined to ?i>his teeth.

All of them sucked and nipped so sweet, never hard enough to mark for force but only through persistence, dedication, painted with the single-minded kind of worship Eddie never even considered having focused on him.

So it’s kind of a wondering way that he reaches, reaches out and thumbs Steve lip in return, marveling a little when he tilts his head and takes Steve in for a breath, just basks in him:

“Only one man alive allowed to mark me up,” Eddie whispers, and there’s love in every syllable. Even that’s not really enough but.

They both know.

And Steve’s grin curve slow and satisfied, leaning in to presses his lips, open-mouthed to Eddie’s that he’d already kissed plump as he woke, long before the breaking light through the windows now, catching in Steve’s gaze, had dared fort with the horizon line; he leans right there and breathes hot into Eddie’s mouth:

“Damn fucking straight.”

For @cranberrymoons, who requested the quote 'Who did this to you?' at my HOBBIT-STYLE BIRTHDAY MONTH PROMPT FEST

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson @estrellami-1 @bookworm0690 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @nerdyglassescheeseychick @swimmingbirdrunningrock @goodolefashionedloverboi @sanctumdemunson @theheadlessphilosopher

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💫 ao3 link here

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not-poignant · 1 year

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This is the anon the said 'safe'. Your tags hit me hard, since I'm actually starting a transition but am avoiding hrt. I've been getting pushback on it, and been told I'm not really trans without it. I know what I want to change to feel like myself. Also what I don't want to change. That's probably why 'safe' was my choice. It sucks when you think you should belong, but still feel like you aren't good enough. It helped to hear you have felt the same. I just want to give you a big virtual hug.

Ahhh I have a similar story, anon <333 I'm so sorry you went through it too.

Under a read more because it contains transphobia towards a nonbinary person from a binary trans person. My experiences are from a nonbinary lens, anon, so take the bits that are useful to you and ignore the rest, depending on where you sit on the trans spectrum <333

When I started realising I was transmasc (I'd known I was non-binary for a while) I remember that I talked to a trans man about it, he'd been going through the process for a couple of years at that point and we'd talked about that too at different points.

And I remember mentioning that I'd thought about hormones, but I was still on the fence because I'm nonbinary, not like 'binary trans' (i.e. I'm not going from point A to point B, where you move from AFAB to man or AMAB to woman), and I was talking about wanting they/them pronouns and maybe he/him pronouns at that point.

And he said: 'Oh cool, yeah, hopefully that helps until you decide for sure with testosterone and surgery.' I had this moment of like ??? and he was like 'when you realise and can be brave enough to commit to being a guy, I hope that goes really well for you.'

It was one of the most transphobic things I'd ever heard, not because it was said from a hateful place (it really wasn't, I'm still friends with this guy), but because it came from a friend, I was being very vulnerable during the conversation and it left me feeling like I didn't have a right to consider myself trans at all for about two years after that. It pushed me into this space where I'd been defined by a fellow trans person as a 'coward until I decided to be officially a man.' And then for two years I kept looking for that inside of myself, denying my non-binary-ness in favour of looking for a very clear and decisive 'I'm a man!' moment. It was a horrible period of time, gender-wise. Because being identified exclusively only as a man or a woman is dysphoric to me, so trying to do it to myself was like cutting at myself with an axe.

It's also very much like when gay and lesbian folk would say to me - back when I identified as bisexual - 'get back to me when you pick a side / become a real queer.' There's a real phobic bent among folks who are 'one or the other' (sighs) towards people who are in the liminal with this stuff and that's where they belong. And it hadn't occurred to me that I'd hear a version of that from a fellow trans person. You'd think I'd have learned, right?

He and I are still friends, but I stopped talking to him about all of my experiences as a trans and nonbinary person. It was clear to me, in that moment, he saw me as a much lesser version of an identity he'd embraced and was living. You know, how so many people think of nonbinary transmascs. (It's also frustrating, because trans men also don't need to have hormones or surgery to be trans men, and it makes me furious when people take this attitude with binary trans folk too, but I'm mostly focusing on my own experience here, of the myriad ways we encounter transphobia in the trans community).

I never heard anything quite like that again, but I've had one other trans guy be like 'when you're ready for testosterone, I'll support you' like he was waiting in the wings for me to 'fully make a decision to be 100% a man' which isn't a decision I can make, because I'm not 100% a man, lmao, I'm like 80% of one, and 20% something else, and 0% woman, lmao, which is why I call myself nonbinary transmasc.

I was lucky that through research and listening to voices in nonbinary transmasc spaces and more open-minded trans spaces that I realised that I'd encountered transphobia, and that this specific kind of transphobia is particularly common in the trans community, especially in cases where a trans man or woman has a period of being nonbinary as an experiment to see what transitioning feels like before they fully commit to the surgery and/or hormones and name etc. that they often wanted all along. So they often project this onto other people, because for them being nonbinary was a midway point, or the middle of an evolution. But being nonbinary isn't an experiment for most nonbinary people, it's literally our identity and it always will be. (And any binary trans person reading this, don't ever use this rhetoric with your nonbinary friends, or your fellow binary trans friends who have elected not to use hormones or surgery - it's transphobic.)

These days, I'm proudly trans and proudly part of the trans community, but I'm also aware that there are a lot of binary trans people who will treat me and other trans folk as 'other' because I haven't suffered through the same surgeries or adjustments that they have. That's...their transphobia, and it's not me expressing my identity wrongly, or being 'lesser', it's just straight up transphobia. It belongs to them, not to me. I don't believe we have a unique word for nonbinary transphobia, it all comes under the same umbrella, but that's definitely what it is.

When you start to feel like you don't belong, anon, remind yourself that this is internalised transphobia, not to punish yourself, but to remind yourself that it's not true. Those feelings belong to the people who gave them to you, but they're not innately or inherently true, they actually have nothing to do with how valid you are at every stage of your transition.

You're fully a trans man if you don't take hormones, and you're fully nonbinary if you do. Whatever you need (or don't need) to affirm or express your gender for you, is what you need, and that deserves to be respected and fully validated no matter what, at any time. Whether it's binding or not binding, hormones or not hormones, hormones and then 'not for the next few years' and then hormones again, surgery or not surgery, etc. Whether you're a trans man, woman, nonbinary, agender etc.

People have this idea of what it is to be a 'proper' trans, bi, gay, lesbian person (like the 'gold star lesbian' which is horrendously disgusting as a term and concept), but all you need - literally all you need - re: these things, is to just... know you're these things. That's it. That's how a gay person can know they're gay without having sex. That's how a bi person can know they're bi without sleeping with someone of the same sex. And it's how a trans person knows they're trans without looking perfectly androgynous or perfectly binary trans (depending on what they desire) on the outside. (Don't get me started on fatphobia in androgynous and nonbinary spaces, and the equation of true 'nonbinary androgyny' with thinness, because that's a whole other rant for another day, lol).

I'm sorry you've experienced that pressure to be 'more' of something from society / particular people. I can specifically relate on the hormones front because I actually went quite far into looking into taking T, to the point where my doctor was ready to sign off with an endocrinologist, before I realised that it wasn't the right decision for me. It might be one day, but right now I know I'm transmasc without it, and I'm concerned about some of the side effects with my neuroendocrine tumours. There are other ways I affirm my gender that work great for me. But I did have a moment of knowing that would impact how other people see me, and it's one thing when it comes from all the cis people, but it's another thing when it comes from the trans community as well. :( Thankfully most people are really validating now, use the right pronouns, and I just don't confide nonbinary vulnerabilities with folks who saw being nonbinary as a midpoint of their own evolution/journey, just to be safe, lmao.

Wishing you fortune and strength and much validation, anon <3 You are amazing as you are, whatever you decide to do or not do in the future. :) *hugs*

#asks and answers #personal #queer culture #i'll never forget that experience #i had the chat right here on tumblr actually #and i remember sort of sitting back in my chair and feeling like something had broken in me #because i'd been supportive to this friend through their transition #and sort of expected the same #and instead got a sort of 'well see you when you get here' conversation #that made it clear that he thought my gender as it is now #was just a weak little scaffold #for the 'end point'#it still makes me emotional thinking about it #i really hope folks who are trans men or women #think about how they talk to nonbinary people #and fellow trans men or women #who are electing not to have one or all of the surgeries or take hormones for many valid reasons #our transness is not defined by how much #we do to our bodies on the way to gender affirmation #we are trans before we ever experience a scalpel or take another hormone #or change our names or birth certificates #all these things can help #and they can hinder #everyone's experience in this is unique #administrator Gwyn wants this in the queue

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