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hitlikehammers · 5 months ago

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you definitely need a 💐LADY WHISTLEDOWN REVEAL💐 for Steddie to follow up on the ✨Morning After✨ the Carriage, don't you???

Regency/Bridgerton AU

once last time: for @hbyrde36, @pearynice, and @penny00dreadful 💜

For perhaps the first time in his life, Eddie is at a loss for his words.

Possibly, it is because there are no words. None that he knows, at the least, and he knows a great deal of them—too many for his own good, according to some.

Though—possibly—it is because his heart is pounding so violently, somehow in his chest and in his throat all at once, that the breath for words at all is lost on him, and if it weren’t, the words would end up pummeled somewhere on the way out his mouth anyway.

Double-edged sword, really.

It is in true Edward Munson form, the way it comes out in the end, the way he confesses without truly confessing. It’s been a growing pit in this stomach, despite the glorious splendor of the past weeks leading up to their nuptials—nuptials!—and the Queen’s renewed obsession weighs, true, though she’s off the scent for now. But when Eddie’s father drove his family to ruin, and his uncle gave up freedom in the Highlands to enter back into society, to house his mother and his own half-fear-made-feral self before the age of seven, to make the Munson name respectable again, not least for spending most of his worth on the property across from the storied Harringtons—but then there was the one specific boy of the family, about Eddie’s own age, who had to come to the Munson’s every day for a month, almost certainly against the wishes of anyone who stood to reign him back and failed, an entire month before Eddie would so much as kick the dirt between them, let alone dare for eye contact.

Which is to say: Eddie started the strongest and dearest relationship of his life with cowardice, without even knowing yet that Steve Harrington wasn’t built to back down from a challenge for the life of him, despite the scars he bore for his stubborn virtue.

It wouldn’t really be true to Eddie’s own well-worn character, now, if he were brave about any of this.

Which is how he ends up slinking to Steve, who is sprawled comfortably on the settee with a book, before dropping a thick, twine-bound collection of pamphlets, years of publications that fall on Steve’s chest dramatically, though Eddie can’t even claim to have planned it so: he’s simply shaking too much to have handed over the evidence poised to damn him with anything like composure.

He trembles even as he stands taut, spine too stiff and shoulders too sharp, hands clasped behind him as Steve sits up, eyes the bundle curiously, unties it carefully and…reads Eddie’s last rites in his own pen because the dawning of clarity isn’t slow: what the papers are is crystalline.

That these are original drafts, in Eddie’s pen, is even more undeniable upon finishing just the first column: Eddie’s writing pen was a gift from Steve early in their years, and he’s never parted with it—too attached, too sentimental—not least when it started to show its age, blotted messy at the ends of lines, especially on a damning ‘s’ at the stop of a sentence.

So many sentences; to spell out his own.

Steve is quiet, as he thumbs through a few more issues: but it’s clear the perusal’s unnecessary. Likely meant just to buy time. Eddie feels an ache in his chest that he can’t place a name to; feels a burning on the ring finger of his left hand that he holds too tight: fearful. Afraid the minutes are numbered, now, before he loses the promise there forever.

But he could not have beared to trap Steve into marriage under the pretense of a lie. He may have already done damage irreparable but, but—

Whatever he can still salvage, for Steve if not himself: he has to try.

“So.”

Eddie’s attention snaps back into the moment as soon as he hears Steve’s voice; startles at the weight of the pamphlets falling atop the table to hand at his side.

Eddie feels Steve’s eyes upon him but…hells beyond if he can lift his own to meet them.

He’s a boy kicking at dirt all over again.

“So,” Eddie breathes; barely. His sentence, his sentence, and all the loss undoubtedly to follow with, and—

He’s too far in his own mind, in his own pulse too heavy to have noticed the approach of anything, even his beloved, until his beloved’s hands are framing his face, those sunrise eyes steady on him. Warm.

Still love there, in them. For him.

“Thank you,” Steve lets his thumbs roam Eddie’s cheekbones; stretch to the line of his jaw where it starts: “for finally trusting me.”

Eddie’s comprehension of time grinds to a halt; he thinks his pulse takes the brunt for how it stalls-still from its racing.

It takes him at least three tries to make a noise from his throat, and even then it’s mostly just a sound, rather than any words to comprehend:

“I,” he manages more as a squeak that he follows with a cough, which does little to clear his voice but a great deal to jostle his heart back to pounding as he flounders:

“I’m sorry?”

And Steve’s brows furrow, but only for an instant; an instant is all it takes to read Eddie top to toe and then soften, to use his hands to pull Eddie close for a chaste kiss that still holds so much:

“Oh, angel,” Steve breathes between their lips as Eddie feels the tremors still tight-wound through his person threaten to break him, to widen the cracks he is composed of wholly, now, and shatter him to bits, but then there is Steve, and Steve is holding to him, and then he’s…he’s speaking incomprehensible words that take too long to even begin making sense:

“You could not have imagined that I didn’t know?”

Eddie’s silence is the only necessary answer, and then Steve’s eyes are widening in shock alongside something close to horror.

“Oh, oh, come here,” the realization in the words is so tender, and honest, and Steve flutters his hands a little in his haste to lead Eddie to sit, to press against Steve’s body so he can melt into Steve's solid hold. And Steve presses his lips to Eddie’s temple, almost aggrieved and unbearably gentle, but the note of incredulity is undeniable as he asks soft, a low rumble through his chest, close under Eddie’s ear:

“Were you so anxious, my darling?”

Eddie doesn’t know what sound he makes, if he makes any at all—he did not anticipate this, he did not anticipate anything like this at all and so he likewise has no idea how it means to progress from here; his pulse feels all the more precarious as it hangs in a balance he cannot predict—but whatever comes from him, sound or some other indication only Steve can see and sense, he is being wrapped tighter, closer, cradled into the soft shirt, mostly unbuttoned to soft tufts of hair across Steve’s broad chest.

“Sweetheart,” he breathes against the top of Eddie’s head, laces their fingers together to kiss before dragging them to better secure Eddie against him, holding their twined hands to his ocean-deep pulse:

“We are family,” Steve murmurs with a certainty that shakes in Eddie’s bones—irrefutable. “Always have been, really,” he adds, a little rueful; “and soon by law and name, but your passions are my passions,” and he squeezes Eddie’s hand once in perfect time for both their unmatched heartbeats, finds the hidden moment where Eddie’s still-sprinting blood matches Steve’s steady drumbeat and somehow the surety, the intimate certitude in that peerless moment holds like a palm soft to Eddie’s frantic heart itself that cradles him, inside and out; talks him down from fears of unknown reprisals.

“Your struggles are my struggles, to remedy immediately,” Steve kisses at Eddie’s curls like a promise, more a vow; “your triumphs are mine to hold close and celebrate in full with you, for you.”

Eddie feels his cheeks heat, but only as a precursor to the warmth the floods the whole of him as Steve adds, even more like true vows against Eddie’s own soul:

“Nothing you could ever do or be would make you less the whole of my heart,” Steve cradles him dear, caresses along his jaw; “certainly never something like this.”

Eddie’s heart throbs heady, surges and expands and he has to focus on breathing a bit more, for a few long seconds, because to be told that, to be touched like this, to be loved this way—

“How,” Eddie has to clear his throat to be heard and still his voice lands thready:

“How did you find out?”

And Eddie isn’t truly ever surprised by how he loves Steve in turn, he doesn’t remember what it feels like to breathe as less, but: Eddie will never not love, in an especially giddy way, how Steve lights up in something a little wily, here, a little mischievous, and now how it’s spiraled along with a glistening adoration that tingles through Eddie with every tap of his pulse.

“First,” Steve cranes his neck to grin lopsided Eddie’s way; “Whistledown was always among the cleverest minds in the ton,” and Steve squeezes Eddie’s hand in his as he peppers kisses along the crown of Eddie’s head, wholly unprompted, just because he can before he concludes with a sweet little shrug:

“There are perhaps only three people in the requisite radius who fit the terms, and two are my own sisters.”

Eddie cannot—does not want to—contest that point. It isn’t wrong, but more than even that: he’s honored to be counted alongside Lady Nancy and Miss Robin, equally formidable in unique—and therefore frighteningly complementary—ways.

But he does fear his fortunes to come, should they not be as forgiving as it seems their brother is—against all odds, though Eddie should never have doubted his beloved just because his own conscience ached; Steve is stalwart and steadfast, and Eddie’s heart has never rested safer.

He will come to know that in the very veins of him, with time. He’s certain.

They both will; Eddie knows it.

“Second,” Steve’s adding on, stroking their still-clasped hands up and down his own chest; “the way it’s written,” and then he’s lifting those hands to kiss again, his smile a tangible thing to feel, and a swift beam of relief to loosen lingering tensions in Eddie’s muscles:

“I may have been blind to precisely how you’ve lived within my heart up until these past weeks,” Steve returns their hands to his chest again and presses in emphasis on the beating he speaks of, the home Eddie feels safest in, now he knows he’s welcome wholly; “utterly spectacular weeks, weeks I could never have imagined,” Steve hums, then grows a touch more serious as he murmurs:

“But you’ve lived in my heart near all my life, Eds,” Steve says simply, then smiles to answer back to the question asked of him:

“The flourish in your theatrics is telling, beloved,” Steve speaks it like an open secret, and something he rejoices in. “Perhaps not to the masses, only because you did not advertise them to their fullest extent for as many years as I’ve been…” he worries his lip endearingly through a losing fight against a grin:

“Privileged enough to experience them in their entirety. To experience you,” and Steve leans to snag a kiss quick before smiling full: “in your entirety.”

Eddie bumps his shoulder against Steve’s in indignation, earning first a yelp and then a hearty chuckle as he protests with very little fire in it, too much soft-sweet joy rising in him now for the ever-more-pressing proof that he is accepted, that his work, his creative purists change little, maybe nothing between them, save that Steve said…

Steve said he would celebrate him. As if Eddie were someone to be proud of.

“You’ve chided and shrugged me off for it, for all my wild theatrics—“ Eddie cuts off the spike of emotion threatening to well in his eyes with wholly put-upon affront as Steve ducks his chin to kiss sloppy, playful, just short of Eddie’s cheek, a little farther back as he defends:

“Lovingly, darling,” and there is humor, ready and easy between them but there is truth, more solid, the bedrock of any other thing:

“No matter the kind of love,” Steve nuzzles him fondly, no—no, it’s so much more than fond:

“Always lovingly.”

And what is Eddie to do in the face of that, save but to sigh against Steve’s chest where he’s held, still; to nuzzle there a little in kind and if the steady lulling of the motion matches Steve’s heartbeat within moments, well: who is Eddie to protest the song that his whole world moves in time with?

“But third, my dearest,” and here Steve’s voice deepens, then lightens to a whisper as he breathes against Eddie’s curls:

“Robin knew.”

Eddie stills. And then he shoots up and braces himself over Steve with eyes wide enough to water as he gasps:

“No,” he barely mouths because, because yes Robin knew, or Eddie suspected—her interest in his dealings with the printer was too sharp, too pinpointed before it died off entirely. Which could have meant she found better distraction, but: she hadn’t.

Which meant: she’d almost certainly fulfilled the curiosity she’d already chased.

But no one had spoken, not a single person had come even in confidence to accuse—

“Oh yes,” Steve sighs gravely but there’s a smirk in it; he teases; “I was the only one she told, I do know that, but.” And Steve shrugs, shakes his head before he lets out a harsh whoosh of air as Eddie falls back upon his chest—at least now they can match, the wind knocked out of them both.

“Of course the possibility alone was always a gamble,” Eddie eventually concedes, draped over Steve once more—a little defeated, though he can’t quite put a finger on why. “I simply…presumed you’d have spoken if she’d,” he gestures aimlessly; “shared her knowledge.”

He doesn’t expect the response to come in the form of a sharp cackle, of Steve easing them both to sitting, but somehow still tangled up and pressed together tight.

“I’m not so proud as not to own fully that I am a terrible gossip,” Steve says without a shred of shame for it, and it is true, Eddie may well have learned his own lack of shame in the enterprise from the man held against him in the first place.

“It brings too much joy, why would I spoil the fun? For anyone, least of all for you,” he asks honestly, which is maybe shortsighted; Eddie knows he’s caused strife with his pen, but he’s never told falsehoods, and he’s never sought to ruin anyone who didn’t cause ruin thrice-fold first.

“I’d have helped you write it in an instant, if you’d wished,” Steve says, almost wistful, the last thing Eddie expected when he entered the room, his shaking hands full of damning evidence; “though of course you never needed my help.”

“I’d have wanted it,” Eddie is immediate to affirm despite his surprise, because his adamance is stronger; because any moments spent with Steve, now or then, before or since becoming what they are, have never been less than a privilege and a delight; “a couple’s activity, far more appealing than the promenade,” Eddie huffs a laugh, still a touch incredulous for how this all is playing out before him, still a little bewildered that his anxious, whirring thoughts and heavy heart were for nothing at all.

He trusts Steve unreservedly, but, surely, surely there is something…

“If I were to continue,” Eddie nudges, hedges with perhaps quite foolish daring; “you would not mind?”

But it isn’t even a surprise when Steve simply leans against Eddie and draws him sideways toward his chest, breathes gentle into Eddie’s hair and kisses his head as he reaches to play with his fingers, to spin his engagement ring.

“Darling, even if I thought it dull as bricks,” and Steve speaks it with such, such warmth; “it brings you joy. And that is my joy.”

And Eddie’s heart soars for the…for the knowledge that this is his life. That this will be his life: forevermore.

He leans to kiss Steve whole and full, and he’s met as passionately, as ravenously, until they soften to gentle pecks, back and further.

“Together then, I think,” Eddie declares, their lips still close so the words drag between their mouths, breathy with devotion; a new flavor of commitment as Steve’s eyes rake over him, widen first to then shine blinding:

“Truly?”

“Every soul deserves its desired secrets,” Eddie reaches to trace Steve’s jawline; to marvel because he doesn’t think he’ll ever see fit to stop; “but there is no part of me that I desire to keep secret from you.”

Steve smiles at him a little longer, before he reaches around Eddie and grabs below the stack of issues—Eddie’d balanced it all on his folio, with the blank sheets and his beloved pen.

“May I?” Steve lifts the case less than halfway sheepish, more than halfway impish; “I think you need a bit of a sendoff.”

Eddie blinks, largely adrift save for Steve’s heat so near to him: anchoring.

“Where am I going?” he asks, bewildered even as Steve's smile grows wider still.

“Wedded bliss in perpetuity is the hope,” Steve presses his lips firm and fast to the left corner of Eddie’s mouth; “but in practical terms?” and then he kisses just the same at the corner on the right before he stands to make toward his desk:

“Quite soon, our honeymoon.”

And oh: but they haven’t spoken overmuch about such a thing but, but…

They’ll be married, and then they’ll be free to…be. Together and in love and wherever and however they wish, as long as they wish it—they get to be husbands and revel in it, wanton and cow-eyed and blissfully besotted.

Eddie must spend long seconds daydreaming—wholly justified, he would note most heartily—because he comes back to himself in the moment, next to Steve where he’s seated again, tapping Eddie’s thigh with the stiff parchment he’s covered in his endearing looping script waiting for Eddie’s attention, which, of course he gives in an instant and oh:

Most Dear and Gentle Reader,

All good things come to their ends, or else their pauses, their crossways and forks in the road. And whichever this communiqué ultimately lands upon happily, my farewell to you now comes on the wings of pure delight: to announce the end of the season with love, with the culmination of a tumultuous journey where not every player walked at the same pace, but one that was nonetheless undertaken together, unreservedly, and met hand-in-hand at the turn of its tale to new chapters. New journeys to seek and embark upon with joy.

I admit my attentions have been distracted of late, so you must forgive what comings and goings I may have missed in the interim. Nevertheless, I think none have slipped my notice so monumental, and indeed relevant to prior missives, as the dramatic and dearly heartwarming culmination of the tale of one of our most scandalous subjects of inquiry, not least because he has not always relished the attention: here, though, he might see the end of his delightfully roguish absurdity, but may our loss be his gain, as it is most certainly his husband-to-be’s.

To wit: Sir Edward Munson has done the honor of pledging the pleasure and privilege of his unmatched mind, his unreserved compassion, his unequaled wit, his inimitable fortitude, his most miraculously peerless heart, and the indescribable joy he brings by merely breathing in proximity, to one Lord Steven Harrington: a man not wholly deserving, but forever committed to the pursuit of earning all of the above, and worshiping with gratitude his beloved, as is only right and proper when one is blessed so thoroughly.

The very sort of happy ending we rarely see played out in these pages to such heartwarming conclusion—for we may seek scandal, but we none of us can deny the unparalleled appeal when matters of true love rise to the fore. And triumph magnificently.

But do not despair in my absence, however long it proves to stretch—there is pleasure in the pathless woods, after all. Journey well, dearest gentle readers, in the whiling.

Eddie swallows hard upon the final words landing, settling in his chest.

How on earth did he get here? How in god’s name can he possibly deserve…this? All this?

With this impossible gift of a man, he—

“So?” and Steve’s tone is just slightly anxious, and oh. Oh, none of that.

Eddie tosses the spectacular, unthinkably praise-filled draft to the table and grabs Steve’s chin, tilts his face up to kiss him, long and hard and deep until they’re both gasping.

“You astound me endlessly,” Eddie breathes, settling his brow to Steve’s as he nearly breaks his face, he feels, for smiling so wide, in such wonder.

“Didn’t think I had it in me?” Steve smirks a little, but nips at Eddie’s lips all the while, and it’s thrilling beyond reason.

“I think you’re capable of just about anything,” Eddie says honestly, caught up in the feeling of it soaking through his ribs.

“Sap,” Steve laughs, but it’s a nearly giddy sort of thing before his tone softens, silken almost, as he bumps the tips of his nose against the side of Eddie’s own; “I had a good teacher.”

“Who in your family reads romance?” Eddie asks, frowning to deduce. Possibly the little ones outside their mother’s notice but—

He’s interrupted in the work of it by a gentle smack to his shoulder.

“The columns, you delightful knob,” Steve rolls his eyes at him, and Eddie’s too buoyant, too effervescent with joys innumerable that he cannot help but lean, nip at Steve’s lower lip and tease back:

“You do delight almost voraciously in my kn—“

He earns himself another smack to the shoulder, and a delightful flush to Steve’s cheeks, and Eddie laughs deep in his chest, his cares of no consequence; invisible really.

“Could you possibly think I didn’t read every single issue once I knew they were yours?” Steve asks, more chiding than anything, like he takes a genuinely dim view to Eddie thinking otherwise; and now Eddie must revise his position—his cares are of no consequence, here, save one:

To worship this man, with all that he is, with every moment life sees fit to grant him, and never to cease, only to grow.

“I love you so,” Eddie mouths against Steve’s skin; “so much more than I know how to say—”

“I know it though,” Steve says with clarity, with confidence; “I know it,” and he reaches to trace Eddie’s lips as he asks, less out of doubt and more to confirm, to swell with what it means to be sure: “just as you know it?”

“I do,” Eddie whispers, and he feels it, the swelling of certainty, of loving beyond words and yet being wholly sure of their weight.

“You quoted Byron,” Eddie runs the tip of his nose along Steve’s jaw, awestruck.

“I listen when you talk,” Steve answers simply; “always have,” which pings exquisite chords in Eddie’s chest, his heart dancing steps it’s never learned, save in loving the man beside him.

“And it felt appropriate. Bookending an era, one might say,” because of course Eddie began with such words, and, he, it, this…

It is perfection. It is so far beyond the realms of what he has earned or deserved and yet—

“Have I upset you?” Steve’s voice breaks in, only a touch of hesitation; “should I apologize for so thoroughly shocking you?”

“Never,” Eddie cups his cheek and draws him in to prove it.

“I love finding out new things about you,” he adds warmly, breathless when they part, warmer still for the heaving of Steve’s chest against his own.

Steve himself takes a moment to catch back his breath before he raises a brow in askance. Eddie, less the athletic type, is still this-side of breathless but: perhaps it is better that way. More reflective of the way his chest seizes while it keeps at stretching him wider, wider, wider still to hold his ever-swelling heart.

“To know that the adventure of learning you, is not only the adventure of a lifetime, but an adventure for a lifetime,” Eddie wonders at him, confesses the core of his deepest heart with joy and pride and abandon as he holds Steve’s face dear between his hands:

“Words fail that privilege, my dearest.”

Steve leans into his touch, and runs his hands up from Eddie’s chest, pressing possessive near his bounding heart, before both slip to either side of Eddie’s neck, stretching to cross behind and drawing him in adoring, ethereal for how his eyes shine:

“A privilege in itself, spoken from so fine a wordsmith himself,” Steve murmurs, close enough that the shape of the words on his lips brush Eddie’s like their own kiss, and then, more than any kiss, he mouths deep in earnest:

“How I love you, Eddie Munson.”

“And I you,” Eddie breathes, his heart a mallet for all the most ineffable, unthinkably rapturous reasons; “another thing words fail for the depth.” Eddie shakes his head, tries to breathe into and out through the wholeness of that feeling in him as a rule, his new norm.

“I’d live inside your heart if I could,” Eddie finds himself exhaling slow, almost overcome, the words spilling on their own for wanting, for feeling this much: “I’d hold you close inside mine.”

“And here you stand, saying you have no words,” Steve whispers, leaning close, cheek to cheek as they both breathe so close their chests lie flush; they can both feel the hearts pounding beneath the other’s ribs.

“I said no such thing,” Eddie corrects brightly, but it’s so featherlight, it’s a certainty that’s nearly weightless save that it’s singlehandedly shifted his entire world:

“I said words failed the feeling,” Eddie mouths against the barest hint of Steve’s stubble; “and to that I still hold.”

And if it means exactly what it feels like: Steve holds the same.

Because the way he leans away only to dive back in to devour Eddie, relentless, passion bleeding between them so fast and full that Eddie thinks he can trace the way it bruises them both so deliciously, marks them reverent and exuberant; the way Eddie feels a sparkling coursing through his veins and sees it reflected in Steve’s eyes in the moments they’re forced to part for breath just to plunge back in again within mere moments, to drown only to better learn to breathe at all—

There are no words for this.

But the truth is undeniable that the both of them feel it.

✨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 @lawrencebshoggoth @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx

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