#what do you mean eddie's going to work through the one thing that's haunted him ever since he's known buck what do you mean

[chronicowboy]

look i really don't think confessions is going to be canon queer eddie but i don't think it needs to be because well. just for a moment. imagine eddie looking at buck for the first time after letting shannon go for good. imagine ryan guzman as eddie diaz looking at oliver stark as evan buckley for the first time after letting his wife rest finally. imagine it.

[ladykailitha]

Paper Hearts Part 4

I finished it!! It will have 8 chapters. I'm excited for you guys to see where this goes! I'm still working on Sweet Home Indiana and will be focusing on that until ITS done. Then we'll be back our regularly schedule WIPs.

We have Eddie's big plan and Steve gets his flirt on.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

****

Steve slipped into the kitchen and there in his mother’s neat handwriting was a note telling him that there were leftovers in the fridge and that they would be home again next Friday.

He sighed and opened the fridge. He immediately closed it when he saw what the leftovers were.

Boiled cabbage with chopped bacon and carrots. It wasn’t bad if it was made correctly, but his mother boiled any flavor and nutrients out of the poor vegetables and then tossed in cooked bacon to hide its sins.

He opened the cupboard and pulled out a small can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and made that. He was craving the sodium. Eddie’s beef was good to get his body to stop shaking, but he had sweat so much he needed to replenish the salt he’d lost.

Once Steve had eaten and drank another glass of water he went to go get a shower and get ready for bed. It was no use trying to get back to his homework now. He had managed to blow up his whole evening by getting lost.

He had no idea how he got to Forest Hills or even why his feet carried him there in the first place. He could feel the weariness seeping into his bones from running for so long.

He undressed and got under the scorching water, letting the heat carry away his pains. His mind ran through all the things that Munson had done for him. The guy had no reason to be nice to him, but he had been more than gracious.

Then it hit him. Munson had called him Stevie, and without thinking Steve had called him Eds.

Eds.

Where the fuck did that come from? They weren’t friends, they could barely be considered acquaintances. Was his brain reaching out to the guy subconsciously? Is that why he ended up at the trailer park? Everyone knew that’s where Munson lived. Who knew how many times the guy had been called trailer trash, but the older teen seemed to rise above the insult.

Steve shook his head, spraying water everywhere. Just because Munson picked up lost sheep, didn’t mean he’d be willing to taken in an injured wolf. Because that’s what he was, reformed or not, Steve would never be a sheep. He would always be a wolf. A predator.

But at least as a wolf he could protect those kids with everything he had. And he would, even if it killed him.

The water had long since turned cold by the time Steve stepped out of the shower. He completed his after shower routine mostly on autopilot as he kept going over his interactions with both Munson men. He didn’t really have good interactions with dads or in this case uncles. But Munson’s uncle Wayne treated him with kindness and he could see where the older boy got it from.

He dressed into his pajamas and slid under the covers. He rolled over on his back and tucked one arm under his pillow, staring up at the ceiling.

Steve thought back to the apology. One Munson really didn’t have to give but did anyway. He thought about the other jocks that bragged about hurting his hand. He held it up and looked at the fading bruise. It wasn’t as though he was even basketball anymore. Hurting his hand wouldn’t do anything but make it hard to do his homework and all he had to do is show his teachers his hurt hand and he’d get extensions for that. Like he had for his concussion last November.

But then again Tommy H. never had reasons for the people he hurt either. He just liked the power he got seeing the person helpless.

He placed his hand over his heart and let himself drift off the sleep, brown eyes and dark curls haunting his dreams.

****

Eddie had originally bought the red heart for himself like he had told the two juniors. But staring at it now, he had a better plan for it. Because that last wall, that last bastion of defense crumbled to ashes when he realized that despite the fancy car, the big house, and the expensive clothes, Steve Harrington was more like Eddie than he thought possible.

Wayne’s approval of the boy cemented that for him. Because if he could take one look at Steve and decide he was worth saving, then Eddie raring to go full steam ahead for a rescue mission.

Eddie could tell that the hearts were made from simple construction paper, like the kind found just about anywhere. He knew it would be technically cheating to just simply make more instead of buying them, but he had no intention of contributing to a dance he was never going to go to because one, it wasn’t his year; two, the whole gay thing; and three, the one person he would want to go with if the gay thing wouldn’t get him hate crimed, wouldn’t give him the time of day.

Well, all right, that might have changed with the whole rescuing him from wandering alone in the dark thing.

He forgave Eddie about being a dumbass, so maybe there was hope for, at the very least, a vast decrease in hostility. And he was willing to take what he could get.

He decided to wait until tomorrow after school to get the construction paper and hope that the high school hadn’t bought up the town’s supply.

On his way out the next morning, Wayne stopped him.

“You don’t have to tell me, son,” he said gently, “but you got feelings for that boy?”

Eddie froze and turned slowly to face his uncle. “What gave you that idea?”

Wayne chuckled and shook his head fondly. “Boy, when you’d go on rants about the Harrington boy, you’d describe his floppy hair, his hazel eyes and how unfairly good looking the kid was. I didn’t say anything because it did sound like he’d been a bit of an ass. Only after last night I got to thinking and was wondering is all.”

Eddie closed his eyes and opened them slowly. He let out a long shuddering breath, his bottom lip quivering.

“I–I don’t...” he closed his eyes again. This wasn’t Al. He wasn’t going to get beat for admitting it, but still it was so hard to say. So he just nodded.

Wayne came up and wrapped his arms around his nephew. “It’s a hell of a lot tougher batting for the other team, but I trust your judgment. Just promise me that if he shows signs of liking you back, you take the chance to tell him how you feel because...”

“You miss one hundred percent of the chances you don’t take,” they said together.

Eddie dropped his bag to the floor and hugged him back. “I know, old man. But I promise if there is a chance, I’ll be brave enough to take it.”

“Get going,” Wayne said, voicing cracking with emotion.

He pulled back and nodded. He reshouldered his backpack and got in his van.

He had a lot to think about and that really wasn’t conducive to paying attention in class or to his friends as they talked about their upcoming D&D session.

Gareth kicked his shin causing him to yelp.

“What the fuck, dude?” Eddie hissed.

“What the fuck is up with you?” Gareth hissed back. “You’ve been going on and on about the mind flayer for weeks and now that it’s literally this weekend, and you’re off in some other realm.”

Eddie blinked at him for a moment before his brain came back on. He shook his head to clear it.

“Yeah, sorry, man,” he said around a pretzel. “Weird night last night.”

“What happened?” Jeff asked, tilting his head to the side.

So Eddie told them. “He was like a ghost, guys. If Wayne hadn’t seen him too, I would have thought I was hitting Mary Jane a little too hard, you know?”

“I didn’t realize he was getting bullied,” Brian said, frowning. “I would have thought with Hargrove giving the dude a wide berth, that everyone else would have too.”

“Untouchable,” Jeff agreed. “The fact that jocks are now splintering into factions tells you what kind of control Steve actually had on them.”

Eddie rubbed his chin. “I don’t know how true this is, but if Harrington wasn’t lying, he’s a real sweetheart, too.”

Then he leaned forward and explained about the pink heart scheme.

“So,” Gareth said, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on them, “you’re telling us is that we have been seriously remiss in our duties in collecting lost sheep.”

The older teen sighed and shook his head. “I’d like to collect him, but I’m afraid the wolves might decide to rip him apart before we got him to safety if we tried.”

Jeff winced. He knew what Eddie was talking about. Steve Harrington wasn’t the usual lost sheep. He might be bullied now, but as King, Harrington had run far too long with the wolves to think that they could protect him one hundred percent of the time.

“So what are we going to do?” Brian asked. “Because if we let this slide, we’re throwing our lot in with the bullies and that’s something I refuse to do.”

A grin spread out over Eddie’s face, closed lips and dimples entrenched into his cheeks. “We’re going to make the school think that he’s just as popular as he ever was.”

The other three boys looked at each other in confusion.

“So what have you got?” Gareth asked, his own grin starting to take over his face.

****

Eddie made sure to get to class early so he could see where Steve was going to sit. He tried to tell himself it was about the dude’s hand, but it wasn’t working. He wanted to see if the former Hawkins royalty would chose to sit with his old friends or by him again.

He didn’t have long to wait. Steve walked in not long after he did, just as the bell rang. He didn’t even look at his old desk near the front and beelined it for the chair he had sat in on Friday.

The teacher picked up on the change immediately and wrinkled her nose. “I am to suppose that you are taking up permanent residence in the back with Mr. Munson, Mr. Harrington?”

Steve half shrugged as he began to pull out his things for class. “I got more work done, Mrs. Dixon and I really want to graduate on time.”

Mrs. Dixon nodded. “Agreed and as long as you continue the level of attention from last week, you are permitted to stay there.”

About half way through class while Mrs. Dixon was grading papers, Tommy H. turned around and kicked Steve’s chair. “Suck up,” he hissed.

Steve puckered his lips and wagged his eyebrows. “Why? Do you want to be next?”

Tommy turned back around, his face bright red.

Eddie raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side as he considered everything about that interaction.

A little blossom of hope sprouted in his chest and he fought to keep it down. Steve had insinuated that other people were gay for years, but to Eddie’s highly trained gay ears, that sounded like Steve was offering to suck Tommy H.’s dick and that Tommy didn’t exactly turn him down.

Curiouser and curiouser, he thought tapping his lips thoughtfully. More research would have to be done.

He pulled out a different notebook, the one he used for campaign notes and song lyrics.

He wrote girls over one column and boys over the other and began tallying what he knew about the former King of Hawkins.

A shit ton went into the Steve liking girls column, but there was surprisingly more in the liking boys column then he would have thought possible. He looked up to catch Steve smirking at him.

Eddie quickly covered his notebook and stuck his tongue out at Steve.

The other boy shook his head and went back to doing the assignment. Eddie was more careful about what he left out in the open because he didn’t want Steve teased for it nor did he want him to see that Eddie was trying to figure him out.

The bell rang and the notebook was suddenly whisked off his desk.

“Hey!” Eddie cried, looking up to see Steve dancing away with the notebook teasingly. “Stevie!” He grabbed his bag and chased after the other boy. But the other boy was a jock and Eddie was wheezing for breath by the time he caught up with him at his locker.

“Give that back,” he huffed.

Steve gave him a bright smile and handed it back. “I just made a minor addition.”

Eddie frowned as he flipped through the pages but didn’t see anything. Steve took it back and turned to the correct page and leaned close so that only Eddie could hear.

“I trust you’ll keep my secret,” he whispered and then dropped to one knee to start getting into his locker.

Eddie gulped at the sight and turned to the paper to avoid saying something stupid. There in bold capital letters under his girls/guys columns was the word BOTH.

He looked up at Steve who had stood up. Steve winked at him and then walked away, leaving a shocked Eddie behind.

****

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Tag List:

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[ghost-proofbaby]

twenty four hours (modern!eddie munson x fem!reader)

HOUR FOURTEEN

in which eddie finally offers you an honesty hour. which is great, until you learn you've bit off more than you're capable of chewing. (oh, and we find out more of what happened at steve's infamous party)

→ tropes: enemies to lovers, forced proximity, slow burn

→ warnings: strong language, eventual smut, upside down does not exist, minors dni

→ wc: 5k+

→ a/n: there is still one more bit of the memory left for steve's party!! i broke it into three bits because otherwise it would be too long as one giant clump lol. sorry this is being posted so late... but hey! it's here! see y'all again thursday lol thank you to everyone for continuing to be so kind about this story and show it so much love

masterlist.

spotify playlist.

◁ previous part, next part▷

14:00 ────────ㅇ─────── 24:00

SIX MONTHS EARLIER 

It’s Eddie. You only know because when Nancy opens the door, she greets him loudly, letting her drunken squeal echo down the hallway and into the kitchen. 

“Munson! Finally!” her voice carries, and you fight the urge to try and move to peek through the doorway to see him, “Took you long enough!” 

Eddie's voice is too quiet for you to hear his reply. He’s not drunk, not fueled by reckless decisions and overflowing affections like most of the other friends were already. 

There’s a terrible twisting in your gut at his arrival, and you know it shows across your face when Robin looks at you apologetically. As if for a moment, they had forgotten they way you and Eddie avoided each other. As if for a moment, they had all pretended that the entire group could convene and it could be easy, and that was on them instead of you or Eddie. But it wasn’t on them. That blame could never fall on them.

It was on Eddie, you decided. He was the one who more ardently avoided you rather than vice versa. He was the one with a sharper tongue between the two of you, always snappy, always irritated with you. It was on Eddie. It should be on Eddie. 

Except, you still felt bad about the Chrissy ordeal. He may have acted as if he disliked you for no reason before, but now he was hating you with reason. You can’t blame him; you’d do the same thing.  If he ruined a date like that, stomped all over possible potential and threw it away without even considering your feelings involved, you’d be out for blood.

You sort of needed to apologize, and needed to apologize soon. 

“Eddie, my man!” Argyle calls out from the couch. It captures your attention just in time to look over and watch as Eddie enters the room, his back facing you, his shoulders slack beneath his leather jacket. 

He’s relaxed. You’re immediately sure that he doesn’t know you’re here yet. 

“Hey, man,” he greets with a gravelly voice, an edge of fatigue to it you’re familiar with. It’s the kind of tiredness that follows long weeks, as you two had spoken about that first night. For a second, you wonder if he’s still having those. And if he is, how often they happen, if he ever comes home from them and thinks about that night, if he has anyone to call when it’s late and they haunt him.

You know you don’t. Neither Steve nor Robin are ever awake that late, or at least don’t answer the phone at that time of day, and you don’t feel close enough with the rest of the group to burden them like that.

There had been a time where you would wonder if Eddie could have become that person, if the type of conversation you two had at the bar the first night could ever translate over phone lines. But that time had been early on, and was long dead. It laid in an unmarked grave with all your other ponderings of what a friendship with Eddie might look like. 

“We can keep you two apart,” Robin whispers, or at least tries to whisper. She’s loud, “He said he had work and wouldn’t make it. We… We thought he wasn’t going to come, so we invited you instead.” 

Oh. 

Oh, what a knock to your pride. Robin means nothing harmful of the words, they should be neutral and just an explanation offered to you. But your mind takes them in its grasp and runs, runs, runs. 

“We thought he wasn’t going to come, so we invited you instead.” 

You’re the backup plan. You see it now, and it sucks, but you press your lips into a cellophane smile that Robin can’t see through in her flurry to distract you with an offering of you two plus Steve having another round of drinks. You decide to take a straight shot of the nearest bottle of vodka, swallowing it down to drown your already sinking heart. You fake laugh when Steve tells bad jokes, you make up lies about your dates of the last few weeks, deciding you no longer care if you add in more details to look less pathetic. 

You’re the backup plan. So you’re sure they won’t notice when you spin a new version of yourself.

This version of you that spews from your lips has gotten lucky more times in the last month than you have in the last year. This version of you is always the one having the last say in conversations, the one leaving men on read rather than the tables being flipped as they were in reality. 

Robin says nothing, even when she notices some of the things you say not aligning with what you’d told her earlier that week.  She only side-eyes you as Steve drinks in every detail, only disrupting to suggest another shot. 

At some point, she gets too drunk to side-eye you. 

“Fuck,” Steve sighs, throwing his head back as he glances out to his living room, where Nancy, Jonathan, Argyle, and Eddie have taken to sitting in an oblong circle around on his and Robin’s furniture, “I need some fresh air. Anyone else?” 

“Me,” Robin responds so quickly, you would have made fun of her if you didn’t notice the sickly shade of green creeping up on her. 

Steve looks at you, raising an eyebrow, but you only shake your head. It makes the room threaten to spin. Maybe, just maybe, you should have slowed your roll with the vodka shots. Maybe.

“I’ll stay in here, hold down the fort,” you promise, letting your eyes fall shut before you inhale deeply through your nose, exhaling softly through parted lips. 

No way. You hadn’t drunk nearly enough tonight to excuse getting sick as Robin was seemingly about to. 

Robin and Steve leave you be as you compose yourself. You think you hear them extend the offer to everyone in the living room, but you can’t make out who agrees to go and who stays. But as you listen to all the footsteps making their way out the front door, Steve calling out that they’d be back soon, you start to become convinced you’ll open your eyes to an empty apartment. 

You open them to an empty kitchen. So far, so good.

But then a voice clears their throat from the living room, just as you pull your phone out of your pocket. You open it to find the cursed dating app still open, your messages with the bartender still staring you back in your face. The bartender you thought you’d hit it off with. The bartender that had stood you up the night before. 

Fuck him, you think bitterly as you turn to find Eddie entering the kitchen. Because of course, given your luck, Eddie was the only one who stayed back. 

“Those apps fucking suck,” Eddie notes, using the neck of his beer bottle to gesture in the general direction of your phone. 

You look between him and the lit up screen for a moment, finding half the mind to click out of the private messages, “You’ve used them in the past?” 

“Nope.”

You wait for a second, giving him the chance to elaborate. But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t, he’s Eddie. If he explained himself to you, that would just be too easy. 

“Okay,” you sigh, squinting at the page and past the vodka, trying to fumble your way back onto the screen that would show you eligible bachelors in your area, letting you swipe and judge them by solely looks as if they weren’t actual people on the other side of the phone. As if they weren’t more than a reservoir of attention at your fingertips. 

Maybe that had been your mistake with the bartender – you let him become a real person to you.

“Why are you even still on them? I heard you’ve been having a shit time with the guys on there – quite the opposite of what you’ve been telling Harrington tonight, might I point out.” 

It’s something in the way he says it. One moment, you’re looking down, ignoring him. The next, you can’t help but lift your head in shock. The words all felt sharpened and poised for a kill, ready for an attack you hadn’t expected so early on in the night. 

“I-” you don’t know how to defend yourself. You don’t know whether to stick by the lies you’ve told tonight, or to be concerned with who was telling Eddie about your love life, “You win some, you lose some. It’s the nature of the app.”

Eddie grins and leans on a counter across from you, “You haven’t made it sound like you’re losing at all tonight. I nearly started a drinking game with Nance where we took a swig every time you said you managed to pull another ‘fuck ‘em and leave ‘em’. Quite the body count you’ve got there, player.” 

You’re drunk. You tell yourself that’s why you take his words straight to heart – you’re drunk, and therefore, you’re sensitive. 

“You’re bluffing,” you snap, “You couldn’t hear me from all the way over there.” 

“We could.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Yes, we could.”

“You’re lying,” you spit finally, crossing your arms defensively. Your emotions were rising too high, too quickly, and you blame the vodka. You blame the vodka and you blame the drink Steve had made you. You blame the bartender who stood you up. And most importantly, you blame Eddie. 

“I’m lying? You’re the one who’s been telling Stevie nothing but lies tonight,” Eddie narrows his eyes at you, as if he expects you to shrink in cowardice when he stands up straight and takes several steps across the kitchen to be closer to you, “Why do you need to even lie about all that, anyways? It’s not like the truth would be any more pathetic than the act you’re putting up. Everyone strikes ou-”

“I’m pathetic?” you scoff and interrupt him, not even paying any attention to where he was going. The tips of your ears are starting to flame with a red tinge, “Just last week, you lied to the group. You were trying to avoid being where I’d be and told them you had to walk your neighbor’s dog.” 

“I did!”

“Your apartment has a strict no pet policy, Eddie.” 

He freezes up entirely, grin faltering before your eyes, “How do you know that?” 

“I didn’t, but Nancy did,” you roll your eyes at the cracks in his composure, “It’s all I had to hear about the entire night. How she wishes we could get along, how she hates when you lie to her. Thanks for that, by the way.” 

“It’s not my fuckin’ fault you go out with my friends,” Eddie grumbles, reserving himself back to his side of the kitchen. If someone came in and squinted closely, they’d find that imaginary boundary between the two of you, an invisible line that would not be crossed. Not here, not tonight. You wouldn’t touch Eddie Munson with a twelve-foot pole if you could help it. 

“And it’s not my fault that you don’t.” 

You can see his agitation spreading like wildfire across his face, in the tick of his jaw and the twitch of his eyes. You can practically see the words that linger on his tongue as he bites down on it – it is your fault. 

“Whatever. Why are you lying to Steve?” his voice goes monotonous as he crosses his arms, and the muscles strain against his shirt. His leather jacket has long been discarded, probably thrown over the back of the couch or a chair in the living room. 

You mirror him, crossing your arms, letting the screen of your phone press into your side, “I’m not lying.”

“You are. With Steve, and with me at this very moment,” his eyebrows furrow and you consider the consequences of chucking your phone at him. 

Your irritation, your own agitation, is all bubbling beneath your skin. If it wasn’t for the vodka mingling with it, you would have been squirming from the discomfort. Usually, he doesn’t get to you. Normally, his off-handed comments come with a sting that can quickly fade. 

None of the jabs are fading tonight. They only seem to linger. Because he’s right, and you hate that he’s right. 

“How the fuck do you even know how my dating life is going?” you uncross your arms, waving your hands wildly into the empty air between you and Eddie, “We aren’t exactly friends. Did Robin tell you? Did Steve tell you?” 

Eddie swallows hard, and you can watch the words wash over him, but you’re unsure of which of your drunken slurs specifically got to him. You weren’t wrong in any of your statements, you weren’t outlandish in either of your guesses. But your words have frozen him up all the same and you aren’t sure why. 

“You’re right,” when he physically melts, the deathly chill remains in his voice, “We aren’t friends. But Rob and Nance are, and Nance and me are. See where I’m going with that one?” 

It’s in the way he says it, confirms it. 

We aren’t friends.

He hisses it out as if it were a painful reminder, as if saying those words burn him eternally. He says them as if they are capable of sending ice through his veins and bones alike. 

You know why he froze now, and it’s too late. 

“Well-” you pause, unsure of how exactly to respond. You’ll be having a talk with Robin, surely. But technically, Nancy was your friend, right? Surely, she was allowed to know the drama of your love life, wasn’t she? “You say that as if Nancy and I aren't friends.” 

“Are you?” he tilts his head tauntingly, as if he knows something you don’t. 

“We… are.” 

He catches the hesitation; he runs with it. He finds the handle of the knife you’d tried to keep so hidden, and he twists as hard as he can.

“Would Nancy agree if we asked her?” he hums, as if he were seriously contemplating this, as if it were a mediocre debate rather than a question of if you had friends or not, “Do you even have her on Instagram?”

“You, her supposed best friend, don’t have her on Instagram.” 

“Because I don’t have Instagram, full stop.” 

“Instagram isn’t the normal gauge of friendship,” you defend yourself, “Some people can have thousands of followers and no friends.” 

You don’t have Nancy on Instagram. You don’t follow her, she doesn’t follow you. The most she’s acknowledged your presence on the app was tagging you in a photo on a night out once. 

“It’s not about follower count,” Eddie shrugs, “It’s about mutual followings. That’s how Hollywood dictates whether celebrity couples are still together these days, yeah? If they follow each other. If you’re friends, you’d follow each other.” 

The vodka makes you bold. Bold enough to mutter out, “Oh, fuck you,” in response to Eddie’s prodding. 

“Wait, I-” you watch an unfamiliar emotion pass over Eddie’s face, something kin to regret. But his words are already out in the air, he’s already twisted the knife in your gut fully. He’s already spilled your blood in the middle of Steve’s kitchen, with no one around to witness it. He did it for himself – he did it for his own pleasure, his own enjoyment.

He enjoys hurting you. 

“Save it,” you mutter, slowly deflating as you turn your back to him, facing the counter to grab your drink to nurse your wounds. 

If you looked close enough in the corner of the room, you would have seen the shovel you should have used to bury away your hope of a friendship with Eddie. You should have piled the dirt over the casket, should have put 6 feet of soil and earth and worms between you and that fruitless yearning. 

But you didn’t. He hadn’t taken it quite far enough yet. 

Yet. 

But then he had to cross that invisible barrier. He just had to walk across the kitchen, come up behind you, and not mind his own business. He just had to look over your shoulder just as you opened the bartender’s profile again, if for nothing else than to further hurt yourself for the night.

You were so caught up in your own disappointment, you never saw the flash of recognition that crossed Eddie’s face. Only the anger that followed.

—

HOUR FOURTEEN - 5:00 AM 

You don’t bother with putting pants back on, only Eddie’s sweatshirt. At this point, pants were just beginning to feel like a nuisance when it came to the two of you. A nicetie, as one might put it.

What were the points of niceties with him if he could never hate you? 

You have the entire five minutes he spends in the bathroom to try and compose yourself. To try and desperately ruminate through these feelings and detach them from everything that was transpiring. The emotions didn’t belong here, there weren’t twists of guilt and sorrow of loss involved for Eddie when he was fucking you. 

So why is that all you could feel right now? 

He could never hate you, but he had spent the last year doing exactly that, hadn’t he? 

“Hey,” he reappears in the entryway of the kitchen with the worst possible timing, right in the eye of the storm that had begun to cloud over your mind. He holds up a pack of cigarettes you can only assume he’d snagged from his room, “I’m, uh- I was gonna grab a smoke out on the balcony. Join me?” 

There’s something of desperation in the way he asks you. All the words are casual, but his tone is an undermining plea; please say yes, please join me, please let me in. He knows something’s wrong, and he’s not just turning a blind eye and ignoring it this time. 

You stare at the pack of Marlboro Reds for a few seconds before shrugging, “Sure.” 

It’s certainly not as enthusiastic as you’re sure he was hoping for, but he smiles at the small victory nonetheless.

The first thing you notice about his balcony, aside from the clustered furniture, is the view. You’ve never thought your city to be very charming, always looking at it from a pedestrian’s view or through the lens of a tired, crabby college student embarking on another late night. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d step foot on a higher floor of a building like Eddie’s, one just tall enough to see over the rooftops of most of the mundane buildings, one that could peer right over the skyline and show a new dawn breaking. It’s a flourish of pink, orange, and violet, each shade stealing away another breath. The sun is just barely yawning over the horizon, just finally awakening. 

God, you’re going to regret not actually sleeping during this time.

“What’s got you scowling?” Eddie mumbles the question out around a cigarette, pausing with his lighter in midair.

You turn your head, and- just like that, all the anger and confusion melts away. He’s painted in the same shades of the sunrise, in a golden light that almost seems to be emitted from him rather than the waking sun. He is all soft edges and tired eye bags, a stubble that you can imagine the itch of against your palm if you were to reach out a hand to hold his face. If you were to kiss him right now, you fear he might dissolve all over your tongue, leaving nothing but his sweetness behind to remind you it was all real. 

It’s real. Even if it doesn’t make sense with what you guys projected before tonight, even if it doesn’t align with how your lives will continue on, tonight was real. You were here, he was here, and what happened…. Simply happened. 

I could never hate you. 

You get it now. Because in this lighting, with a soft breeze tugging your hair and mind alike, you know you feel the same way about him. And you know it contradicts all you have shown him in the past. 

You could never hate him. He could never hate you. It’s unfortunate that that’s what you’d been calling it before tonight – hate. 

“It’s going to really suck,” you breathe out half a sentence. Two endings before you: letting this night go or, “Not sleeping for a full twenty four hours.” 

You don’t know how he does it, how he looks at you like he knows you had something else to say. But he gives you those eyes, and they almost elicit the truth from you. 

Almost. 

He throws his head back in laughter, and the pinks and purples and all the fights wasted are now trailing down his neck, “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” 

He’s much better at pretending than you are. You know that now. 

“Seriously,” you turn and walk to the railing, crossing your arms against the metal grate before he joins you at your side, “I’ll probably ditch my classes on Monday. I’ll have to sleep twenty four hours straight to even the score.” 

“God, I wish I could fuck off for Monday,” Eddie groans. He’s throwing his head back again, and you can’t help but wish you could replace the golden rays with your lips. You wish your warmth could sink beneath his skin like the sun’s does. 

“You can’t?” your voice cracks with the question as he finally lights the cigarette between his lips. 

He takes a long drag, shaking his head with the exhale of smoke, “Nope. I work Mondays at the shop.”

“The shop?”

“Myo’s,” the way his lips curl around the filter of his cigarette as he fights his grin burns a hole in the middle of your chest. Burning and erupting, yearning and longing, ignored and buried, “The auto shop on Main street.” 

You know by the way he looks at you that the name should ring a bell, but considering you don’t own a car, you don’t have the slightest clue what his job is, “Oh, so you’re a mechanic?” 

“I- Yeah,” he nods slowly, “Yeah, I’m a mechanic,” he pauses and you can see that he has more to say, it just takes him a moment. He looks off the balcony, shifts his weight between his two feet, takes another drag of nicotine. When he finally gathers his thoughts, you’re patient and waiting, biting back a small smile the moment he whips his face towards you, “Have we seriously never talked about that before? I swear I’ve told you I’m a mechanic.”

“Nope, seriously. Never.”

“There’s no fuckin’ way.”

“There absolutely is a way,” you laugh, letting your head fall backwards and not catching the way his gaze falls on you. The sunrise paints you in just as beautiful of a lighting as it had him. If someone asked you, you’d say that you doubt he noticed, but he did. He noticed. He always noticed, “Usually, by now, we’d be at each other’s throats.” 

“We sort of were,” he shrugs, eyes still glued to how your collarbone peaks out from beneath his sweatshirt, “Surprised we didn’t leave more hickies.” 

The topic you’d been avoiding. The topic he seemed indifferent about. 

I could never hate you. 

You decide to put his words to the test.

“Are we going to talk about it?” you ask, looking down now and picking at flakes along the metal railing, still not noticing him noticing you, “About…. what we just did?” 

“Are you always this straight to the point?” he chuckles nervously. In your peripherals, you catch the way he leans and mirrors you, side by side on the railing. His light cigarette hung loosely between indifferent fingers. Indifference, indifference, indifference. 

If you’d just look at him, you’d see anything but indifference written across his face. 

“Only when it matters,” you reply, breathing in his secondhand smoke, “Only when it’s important.”

His pinky is within reach of yours once more, just like at the parking garage. Even after feeling the entire expanse of his bare skin against yours, you still crave more – you crave for the intimacy that comes from hooking pinkies as grown adults, from knuckles curling into each other like hinges of a door of possibility. 

You don’t see the way he swallows hard, or how he nods subtly to himself before he says, “Alright. Let’s talk about it.” 

Those words make you look at him quickly, taken back and not expecting for him to give so easily. If you had noticed him noticing you, it would have been the expected reaction; if you’d seen the way his eyes traced over the pink and orange shadows of your features, you’d know he can’t really say no to you. Not anymore. 

“Yeah?” you only ask for the confirmation because you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He won’t let it. He holds it tightly, just nodding, “Yeah. I… You deserve my honesty.” 

You deserve my honesty. 

I could never hate you. 

“I’m starting to get a bad feeling of deja vu, Eddie. We don’t have to do honesty if you don’t want to-”

“Ask me anything. Right here, right now. I’ll answer with the full truth.” 

You flashback to hours before, when he’d offered his honesty this willingly and you’d only thrown it back in his face. But right now isn’t that moment, the two of you aren’t in the heat of an argument, there isn’t an impending doom on the horizon and the weight of the night no longer rests on either of your shoulders.

You don’t care as much about why he hates you now, or what he meant by never hating you to begin with. You don’t care much about the porn magazines and you don’t care what changed that first night. 

They’re all petty details that have had too long to gather dust. 

You do care about his job, you do care to know why he chose to fix cars. You do care about if he still takes night classes, and if yes, which ones. You care to know his favorite color and you care to know how he takes his coffee in the morning. Maybe you even care to know if he has a favorite coffee shop. 

You care to know all the new petty details you’d never uncovered about him. Miniscule bits and pieces of him you crave to hold in your hands, if only just for tonight- or today, at this point. 

But you need a baseline question. Something that won’t throw him off, but really doesn’t twist around your heart as severely as the others. Something that does neither damage nor nurture to the vines and blooms still occupying your chest. 

You suddenly remember a small detail that had been revealed to you by a third party tonight, “Okay, um, well…” you ponder on phrasing, and Eddie edges ever so closer to you, “At that bar we went to tonight, the bartender – Frank – mentioned how you’d been going there for about six months.” 

Eddie pales, but he nods nonetheless. Maybe the question is more loaded than you’d anticipated. 

“I guess... I…” you continue to stumble over your words and it only leaves Eddie more time to panic, “I’m just curious why you started going? Yeah, yeah. That’s… that’s my question,” you tilt your chin up, try to be seem more confident in your question. 

Even in his panic and sudden blanching, Eddie looks ready to laugh at you as his eyebrows scrunch. Somewhere between the wrinkles, you swear you could find something like affection, “That’s your question? Why did I start going to a bar that’s conveniently close to my apartment?” 

Maybe it is a good baseline question. Maybe he was just nervous from the other possible questions you could have asked about your time spent together at the bar. 

“That’s my question,” you confirm. 

The color isn’t returning to Eddie. His hand shakes when he brings his cigarette to his lips. His breath is evidently shaky on the exhale as the smoke puffs out unevenly. 

It’s not a good baseline question. 

“I…” he won’t meet your gaze, and all your gut can do is twist, twist, twist in anticipation, “I got kicked out of my last bar I was a regular at.” 

“Got kicked out? Why?” 

It’s ripping the bandaid off the wound of honesty, and neither of you even realize it. Neither of you notice the blood of your history catching up to you. 

Eddie sighs and rolls his shoulders before looking at you, “I got into a fight.” 

Your twisted gut stills. A fight? Why is he freaking out so evidently over a fight? Does he think you’ll judge him that harshly? 

“A fight?” you echo your thoughts with a soft laugh into the morning air, “You… Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? Jesus, did you go to jail that night? That would suck, but… Eddie, I won’t judg-”

“I didn’t go to jail,” he interrupts, “I mean, they should have called the cops on me, but they didn’t. They gave me a second option of leaving immediately, and being banned for life, effective the moment I stepped out of the building that night. I took the ban.” 

“Well,” you relax your shoulders, looking over at the rising sun, “That’s nice of them, I guess, right? I’m sure whatever mean drunk swung their fist at you deserved to get their ass handed to them-”

Eddie interrupts you with a soft utterance of your name, making you look back to his hues of gold instead of the sky’s, “I swung first.” 

Oh. Maybe that’s why he still looks so wrecked with nerves. Maybe he thinks that’s the piece you’ll judge him on – it has to be the reason you can see sweat gathering along his eyebrow, just beneath his bangs. “Then I’m sure whoever it was deserved it? I-”

“He did,” he interrupts one final time. You’re about to finally snap at you, telling him to just let you speak, to just accept that you weren’t going to judge him over some bar brawl, when he drops the final bomb of an answer. Here is the honesty, you both realize at the same time, as his words slice through you, “It was about you. I got banned because of you.” 

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[oneforthemunny]

you make loving fun |older!dilf!eddie munson x reader| part 9

prompt: after a long week, eddie is exhausted. you come over to help him unwind.

reader is 26 and Eddie is 42. age gap relationship, but everything is consensual.

eddie edit by @eddiemunsons-missingnipple thank you love <3

contains: age gap, older!dilf!Eddie, angsty, mentions of trauma (relationship, parent), dad guilt, relationship guilt, Eddie is a little insecure and vulnerable in this, language, p in v sex at the end. minors dni

Eddie was exhausted.

The kind of exhausted that had him collapsing on the couch when he got home, staring at the blank TV screen, still in his work coveralls covered in grease and oil. Nothing played on the screen, the remote situated in Eddie's stained hands, but he couldn't bring himself to turn it on, simply staring straight ahead.

The past few days had been hard. Eddie had been working overtime at the shop, two of his guys had come down with the flu, and the icy roads brought in more cars than he could handle.

To make thing worse, Brielle was furious at him. After he'd come home the night before, bones aching and heavy, all he'd wanted was to relax. His plans quickly turned when Brielle came to him, sheepishly holding a slip that needed to be signed. A detention slip.

Eddie had snapped, he knew he shouldn't have but he did. Tired and agitated that Brielle had left the school's campus again.

"Daddy, I just went to get lunch!" She whined, a high pitched shrill that had him wincing, shutting his eyes and rubbing his temple.

"Brielle, you're not supposed to leave-"

"Well, maybe if you'd actually grocery shop, I would have lunch to eat, and I wouldn't have to leave!" Brielle snapped, hateful and mean.

Eddie knew she didn't mean it. That she was just trying to deflect and pin the blame elsewhere (a manipulative tactic she'd unfortunately inherited from Gina), but it didn't make him feel any less horrible. He had forgotten to go grocery shopping, again. He'd meant to go, but he'd been so busy.

Guilt filled his chest, heavy and suffocating, embarrassment and anger- at himself, mainly- flooded his veins. Eddie had screamed at her in frustration, demanding she go to her room, that she wasn't to leave for the night. The night ended with crying, hurling hateful words, and slamming doors.

Eddie held his head in his hands, smoking his cigarettes furiously out on the porch. He felt his stomach churn. He hated yelling at Brielle, prided himself in rarely ever loosing his cool like that. Every time he did, he felt horrible.

He felt like his dad.

Gina's biting tone from years before, when they were still married always rang through his head, haunting him and leaving his mind spiraling. "You scream at her and act just like your dad did!" She'd barked at him, one particularly nasty fight. "And when she wants nothing to do with you, Eddie, just like you want nothing to do with him, you'll have no one to blame but yourself!"

Eddie had felt sick, sobbing and crumbling in front of her, not for the first time. Gina hadn't even met his father, didn't know anything about him other than what Eddie had told her. When he'd rambled, spilling his anxieties about being a good father, not wanting to be like his dad. She had cooed at him, sickly sweet smile assuring him he'd be nothing like him, just for her to always use it against him. Hit him in his weakest spots.

Eddie wished he'd never told her that.

Eddie hadn't slept all night. When he'd gone to talk to Brielle, she was asleep, her tear stained cheeks didn't make him feel any better. Guilt and nerves wracked his chest, keeping him tossing and turning all night.

By the time the morning came, Brielle was gone to school and not coming home until Monday night from Gina's. Eddie had sent her a text, telling her to have a good day and he that loved her. She'd only replied with a cold and short, 'you too'.

Eddie went through the whole day, mind racing and keeping him distracted. He went through every 'what if', beat himself up, convincing himself Brielle would hate him forever.

On top of it all, his back was aching. Shooting pains that had him grunting and wincing with every step, and he couldn't find his medicine. He needed to go back to the doctor before he hurt himself further, but they'd want him to take time off- take it easy. He didn't have time for that.

The doorbell chimed through the silent house, making him jump, eyes snapping forward. Eddie groaned when he stood up, pain setting back into his lower spine as he shuffled to the door.

You stood there, looking as beautiful as ever in your little slip dress that had Eddie grinning. "Hey, baby," You chirped, stepping forward to press a kiss to him. "D'ya just get home?"

Eddie nodded, one hand still on his spine and other holding onto the door. You cocked your head to the side. "Long day?" You asked, he nodded again, long sigh out of his nose. You frowned. "D'ya still wanna go out?"

Eddie's face fell, blinking as he looked down at you. He groaned, leaning his head against the door. "Fuck, baby, I'm-" He shook his head. "'M so sorry. I-I completely forgot."

You watched the way he winced, like he expected you to yell, scream, berate him. Instead you furrowed your brows, concern lacing your features. "That's alright, honey, we can go another time." You hummed, thumb padding across his cheek. "You feelin' ok? You look..."

"Like shit?" Eddie scoffed.

"Tired." You said, cupping his cheek.

Eddie nodded, deep breath that had your eyes flashing to his carefully. "I am." He admitted softly. "'M real sorry, baby. I-I can go get ready real quick, just let me shower and take my meds-"

"Eddie," You said firmly, giving him a stern stare, hands on your hips like you gave your classroom when they were talking during a lesson. You ran a hand down his arm, tense under the touch. "Let's just stay in tonight. Take it easy, you need to."

Eddie hesitated, lips pressing together, eyes furiously reading your expression for any signs that you were upset. You grabbed his arm, stepping into the house. "C'mon, I can order us pizza. Where do you want?" You asked, moving into the kitchen, slipping your heels off and kicking them into the corner.

Eddie watched you, carefully, shutting the door. He moved into the kitchen, hand still cradling his lower back. "We don't have to get pizza if you don't want. Just let me know where you'd like. Anywhere, I can-" You looked up at him, forehead furrowing when you saw him. "Honey, is your back actin' up again?"

Eddie's face flushed in embarrassment. He knew you didn't care that he was older, and that his back had been hurting since his mid-thirties, but it still hurt his ego a little, knowing he showed signs of aging in that way. Wear and tear that could slow him up from time to time.

Eddie shook his head, and you tutted at him, spinning around to the medicine cabinet, fingers thumbing through the bottles until you found the orange bottle you were looking for. Twisting the lid, you popped two pills into your hand, reaching into the fridge for a water.

"Eddie, you've got to take your medicine when your back starts hurting." You sighed, shutting the fridge with your hip. "Before it gets bad like this."

You handed them to him, watching him toss them back before you handed him the water. He was quiet, cautious. You sighed softly, hand running over his cheek.

"How about I run you a bath? That way you don't have to put as much strain on your back, ok?" You suggested, swiping at his curly bangs. Your hands moved down his body, gently massaging each kink and knot you felt through his scratchy, thick coveralls.

"You don't..." Eddie shook his head, swallowing around the lump in his throat. He wasn't sure why you were being like this, so caring and kind for him. He felt guilty. He'd forgotten your date and now was making you dote on him.

"Bunny, I can just shower, and we can still go out." Eddie insisted, quickly, forcing a smile but his eyes crinkling when he moved betrayed him.

You frowned at him. "Eddie," You warned, lifting a brow. "You need to rest." You poked his chest gently. "I can feel your stress from over here." You teased.

Eddie snorted, shaking his head. "'M fine, I promise." He said softly. "I really feel better already. Just give me thirty minutes, and I'll-"

You held up your hand to him. "Eddie, I'm not listening to you." You said, glaring at him. "I'm not listening to anything else unless it's what you want me to order, and where you keep your bubble bath stuff."

Twenty minutes later you'd called in the pizza, filling up the tub with warm water that steamed and rose to your face, warming your cheeks. You poured in the lavender scented bubble wash, stirring for hand through the water.

Eddie watched you from the doorway. You'd asked commanded him to take his work clothes off, making a mental note to treat the stains in them before they settled in worse.

"I think it's ready." You grinned, wiping your hand on your t-shirt you changed in to. It was Eddie's, but it was your favorite one. Soft and from his youth, from when he'd seen Ozzy in concert in '91.

Eddie hummed, shuffling over to you without much protest. As much as he wanted to, the water did look inviting. The candles you'd lit adding more comforting ambience to the mood.

"You gonna get in with me?" Eddie asked, a wicked, suggestive grin on his face.

You giggled, shaking your head. "Someone's gotta get the pizza." You said, rubbing his bare leg when he dropped his boxers, stepping into the tub with a groan. "But I'll stay with you. Keep you company if you want."

Eddie nodded, sinking into the water. "Please." He sighed, feeling the hot water soothe his muscles, stretching out into the tub. It was a little tight with his long limbs, but it felt nice, deep enough to cover him.

You rolled a hand towel, lifting his head so he could rest on it, a makeshift bath pillow. You made a mental note to order him one, a little gift for him since he was always giving you ones.

Eddie muttered a thank you, eyes fluttering close as the warmth of the water wrapped around him. You smiled, heart warming at seeing him like this. You liked taking care of him. He always took such good care of you, and you liked returning the favor.

"So," You said softly, stroking a wet curl behind his ear. "What happened?"

Eddie sighed, long and tired, out his nose, his eyes still shut. "How long you got?" He teased, edge of his lips curling up softly into a smile.

He told you about work, how stressful it had been, how he'd managed to tweak his back. You ran your hand through his hair, smiling when he leaned into your touch. Your head propped in your hand when he talked about Brielle, sympathetically pouting with him.

"...I just," Eddie sighed, frustrated. "I don't like yelling at her like that, ya know?" His eyes opened, looking at you carefully.

You nodded, fingers skating over his muscles. His shoulders tensed when he talked about it. "I don't want her to hate me, ya know?" He sighed. "I'm always the one who has to get onto her, though. Gina won't ever. I'm always the bad guy."

Your heart fell, anger rising and bubbling in your chest at the mention of Eddie's ex-wife. Of course she painted Eddie out to be the bad guy, you don't know why you thought she might have the decency to not do that to their child.

"You're not the bad guy," You mumbled softly. "You're a dad. You're parenting her."

Eddie scoffed lightly, looking down at his hands in the water. "Yeah, and I'm not good at it." He muttered. "Brie wouldn't even talk to me today." Eddie paused, lip starting to tremble. He tightened them quickly before you could see.

"I don't want her to hate me." He admitted, eyes shining when he looked up at you. Your breath caught gently. You'd never seen him like this, vulnerable. "I just... I wanna be a good dad, and I don't... I don't want to fuck her up. Like my dad did."

Your heart crumbled, sinking and aching in your chest. "Eddie," You cooed gently, cupping his cheek. "Baby, you're so good to her. She loves you, Eddie."

Eddie shook his head. "Eddie, yes," You insisted, firmly. "Why do you think she's over here all the time? She's a teenager, they're really stupid. I was one not that long ago, believe me." You cringed slightly at the wording, blushing when he raised a brow at you.

"I mean, whatever, you know what I mean." You giggled. "You take such good care of her. You take such good care of me, and everybody else."

"I don't." Eddie grumbled.

Your brows furrowed, pulling your hand away and fixing him with a stern glare. "Stop saying that. Who's put this in your head, Eddie?" You asked, firm but gentle, heart aching at the way his eyes softened sadly. You had your answer.

"Eddie, you're a good dad, a good boyfriend, a good man. You're good." You said, sincerely.

Eddie clenched his jaw, fighting the emotions bubbling in his chest and creeping up his throat. He wouldn't cry in front of you, he couldn't let himself. But you could tell how much it meant to him, especially when he reached his soapy hand out, intertwining his fingers in yours and giving you a squeeze.

"You're good," Eddie repeated, eyes shining at you. "Too good to me, bunny. Y'didn't have to do all this for me."

You smiled, leaning forward to kiss him sweetly, gently. "I'm happy to." You grinned, your nose still on his. "I kinda like gettin' to take care of you like this." You admitted, a blush dusting your cheeks.

Eddie scoffed. "'M supposed to be takin' care of you, baby."

You smiled. "You do." You said, hand stroking down his cheek.

Eddie stayed in the bath until the pizza arrived, fingers shriveled and pruned, but he felt better. Soothed from the inside out, his back pain minimizing to a dull ache.

You two sat on the couch, cuddled together eating pizza, watching some movie Eddie had never seen before. A rom-com that when he told you that, you gawked at him in disbelief.

You'd managed to get Eddie into the bed early, with the promise of a massage. You straddled him, hands working over his tight and sore muscles while he groaned, muttering underneath you about how good it felt.

The night took a turn you didn't expect, but you didn't reject. Eddie on his back, hand gripping your waist while you rode him, slow and passionate. You leaned down, hands on his shoulders, your chest on his.

Eddie groaned in your ear, feeling you clench around him, your lips working on his neck, at the spot right under his ear that had his toes curling.

"Easy, baby," You cooed when he clenched beneath you. "You don't wanna- oh fuck- hurt your back." You whined breathlessly.

"Keep going," Eddie growled, hands gripping the meat of your ass. "Don't stop. 'M so close."

You felt yourself clench, stuttering your movements while you chased your own orgasm. Eddie was twitching in you, balls drawn up tight, he was close.

You pulled off him slowly, lewd squelch filling the room. You ignored his whines of protest, an evil glint in your eyes when you crawled down his body, pumping him a few times before shoving him down your throat.

Eddie groaned when your nose touched his hairy base. He smelled like lavender and soap from the bath. His hands found your hair, gripping as he spilled down your throat.

You wiped your mouth, smiling at him when you sat up, enjoying how he panted, catching his breath. "Fuck, you're so good to me." Eddie whispered, reaching out for you. "C'mere, bunny."

You climbed beside him, face pressed to his chest, running your hand down his still lotion-slicked body. Eddie pressed kisses into your head, holding you tight.

"Thanks f'takin care of me." Eddie whispered into your hair.

You looked up at him with a small smile. "I'll always take care of you, Eddie. You don't have to thank me." You said, hand running down his tummy.

Eddie smiled, pressing a kiss to your lips, passionate and needy. You sighed against the kiss, letting him melt into you. You knew he wasn't used to having someone care for him, love him with no string attached- tonight made that very obvious. But you were determined to prove to him that you were, that he deserved to be loved that way.

Loved the way he loved you.

[familyvideostevie]

october thirty-first

day thirty-one: steve harrington last halloween didn’t end that well for you and steve. but this year? much better. | a no good at waiting one-shot, fluff, smut, mdni, 18+ | 2.4k detailed content warnings: fem!reader, smut, p in v sex, unprotected sex, creampie, thigh riding, riding, dirty talk, some aftercare-ish

“We're doing it this year, Steve.”

Your boyfriend looks unamused from behind his aviators. The sun set hours ago but he won't take them off because it “compromises his costume.”

“Jesus,” he mutters. “For real? You actually want to?” You both know Steve isn't great at saying no to you, even when it comes to going on the haunted hay ride at this year's Sara's Farm Halloween Festival. Steve only had to work the first few hours and make sure no one sustained bodily injury during the pumpkin carving contest, so now you're walking around, taking in all the fun.

You're pressed close to him — it's cold, no surprise for Indiana — and wish you had another layer on. Steve convinced you to dress in vaguely Top Gun themed clothes to honor the movie he's been obsessed with since you saw it in theaters. He's in a patched aviator jacket, jeans that hug his ass sinfully, and the stupid glasses. You've tried to look like Tom Cruise's savvy analyst girlfriend by putting on a leather jacket and red lipstick.

“We're grown ups,” you say, bumping his shoulder with yours as you approach the line for the hay ride. “We can handle it.” Robin and Eddie are working the route again and this year you're pretty sure some of the high school kids are, too. They all begged you to get Steve on it and what's love if not taking a chance every now and then to pull a fast one on your partner?

“Speak for yourself,” he mutters but allows you to tug him on to the wagon. He places his hand on your thigh automatically and does his best to look unamused but flinches when the whole thing surges forward and into the dark rows of apple trees. “I can't believe I'm doing this.”

Neither of you handle it well, truth be told. There are only a few other people on the bales in the wagon bed and you and Steve for sure scream the loudest. Your friends catch on to your presence quickly and clearly make it worse for you both, jumping out of the trees and reaching as if you pull you both to the ground. But it's fun. It's fun in the way most things that give you an adrenaline rush are — you scream and laugh in the same breath, pressing closer and closer to Steve until you're practically in his lap as the wagon rounds the final corner.

That's when you feel him hard through his pants.

“Really?” you ask. “Keep your hands to yourself, Harrington.” He scowls and tightens his grip on your hips so you don't fall when the wagon jostles side to side.

“I can't help it, honey.” You wriggle a little more and his fingertips press harder into your skin. “Stay still.”

You do not stay still. It's just too much fun to mess with him like this — something you do often in your new house. Teasing him from room to room and reveling in the thrill that he wants you. Steve always wants you.

The feeling is mutual.

When the ride finally ends you mean to tell Steve that Eddie and Robin are going to meet you so you can all hang out, but you don't get the chance. Your feet barely touch the ground after stepping off the wagon when he grabs your hand and drags you through the crowds.

“Steve,” you say incredulously. “Steve, what are you doing?” You try to keep up with his long strides so he'll hear you.

He doesn't stop until you slip around the apple bobbing and against the wall of the farm store. He crowds you against the wall, suddenly in your space, face close enough that you can count his eyelashes. His pupils are blown and his cheeks are even more flushed than they were on the hay ride.

“If you think I'm going to stand around about to cream my pants, you're insane.”

You swallow and feel his words between your legs. “Oh,” you breathe. “Okay.”

He tugs on your hand again and you're off, snaking behind the store and further into the grounds. It only takes a few more moments before you realize that he's leading you to his old loft. You laugh into the night air and Steve looks back with a boyish grin, the intensity of his gaze somewhat faded back into the comfort and ease of your relationship.

Though he doesn't live here anymore you know that Hopper hasn't gotten around to renting it out yet and Steve still has a key. “Don't trip,” he teases as he tugs you up the spiral stairs. He takes a few seconds to dig out his keys and get the right one in the lock. You want to touch him so badly you entertain jumping him on the landing but he gets the door open quickly and you stumble inside.

“Thank Christ that worked,” he mutters. The loft is empty of the things that make it Steve but the furniture is still there, including a made bed, which feels like a miracle.

“I'd fuck you in the barn,” you say. Steve wiggles his eyebrows and once again crowds you back against the door.

“Oh, yeah?” he mutters. He shoves a thigh between yours and gently tugs your head to the side so he can trail his lips up your neck. You feel his cock, somehow harder than before, and wiggle for friction. “You still know how to surprise me, bee girl.”

“Steve,” you gasp. “Don't tease.” He could quip about your actions on the hay ride, could drag it out and make you a whimpering mess here against the door by barely touching you, but he doesn't. Steve always wants you just as bad as you want him. He presses his lips to yours in a bruising kiss, cradling the back of your head as he presses you into the door.

It is not lost on you, even through your lustful haze, that this time last year you were doing the same thing. A night that changed everything, that almost broke everything had it not worked out in the end. It makes you more desperate, makes you slide your hands under his shirt to feel his skin, makes you grind harder on his thigh and swallow his moans. You almost gave this up. You almost ruined it.

Steve licks into your mouth and your tongues meet, desperate and messy and then he palms your breast, thumb swiping at your nipple and you keen.

“Bed,” you manage to say. “Bed, Steve.”

He sucks a spot on your neck for a moment more before releasing you. His hair is a mess, lips spit-slick and swollen and the way he looks at you makes your knees weak. “Come on,” he says softly. He sheds his costume as he goes, jacket and shirt and sunglasses tossed on the floor. You follow his example as he closes the curtains and shucks off his jeans.

“Are these sheets clean?” you ask, tossing your bra aside. Steve looks his fill and you let him.

“Hope so.” His eyes meet yours and for a second you're sure he's remembering last year, too. How tender it was, how he fucked you sweet and slow, how you left him.

Things get a little desperate after that.

You shed the remainder of your clothes and he sits against the headboard. You admire him like that, cock hard and already leaking, chest rising and falling as he pants though you've barely done more than kiss. You can feel how wet you are, feel the tightness in your belly just by looking at him.

“Baby,” he groans. “C'mere, please.” You crawl up the bed to him and straddle his thigh. He presses his fingers into your skin, eyes wide as you start to grind on him. You move your hips back and forth until you find a rhythm that catches your clit in a way that makes you gasp.

“Oh, god,” Steve moans. “Look at you, huh? Getting my thigh all messy, fuck.” You lean forward so he can press his face to your chest and tongue at your nipples.

Steve keeps up his filthy babble. “Barely touched you and you're so wet,” he says. “Feels good? Getting all worked up?” He pants your name over and over. “Look so pretty like this, baby, riding my thigh.”

“Wanna ride you,” you manage to say. He bounces his leg a bit and you whine. You reach down and fist his cock clumsily.

Instead of replying Steve shifts you over and lines himself up with your entrance. “You gonna be okay?” Your eyes lock. He means with the stretch, with the position. With fucking him bare. You and Steve have been doing that for a while now and you know he loves it, how he can feel every inch of you and fill you up without worry. You like it, too.

“Steve.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs. You sink down on him and both grown in unison. The stretch comes without any pain, feels like you and Steve were made for each other, as it always does. “Holy shit,” he says, panting into your neck. “Never gonna get over this. How tight you are, how you have a perfect cunt—”

You cut him off by starting to move, a slow circle of your hips that has him choking on his words, his babble dissolving into your name and nothing else. You can feel his mushroom tip brushing the spot inside you that will have this over all too quickly, the vein along the underside of his cock that drags as you start to lift your hips. Steve does his best to help, hands firm on your thighs and meeting your movements with little thrusts of his own as he trails his lips along your chest, your clavicle, your neck.

“So beautiful,” he mutters. “So fucking good, you feel so fucking good —”

The hook in your belly pulls tighter and tighter but it's not where you need it to be. Your thighs are burning and you feel hot all over and you can hear how wet you are, hear the smack of your skin as you ride him. But it's not enough.

“I need — Steve —”

You reach down to give your clit some attention but Steve beats you to it, thumb roughly circling as you both start to move more frantically.

“I'm close,” he hisses. “I'm close, where do you want —”

“Inside,” you gasp. “Inside, please, Steve —”

He makes a noise that has your orgasm teetering on the edge, punched out and desperate. “Fuck, baby,” he says. You cling to him desperately as he shifts you, changes the position so you're on your back, legs around his hips. He fucks you hard, skin smacking, the filthy sound of your slick drowned out only be Steve's litany of your name as the hook pulls tighter and tighter.

“Let me fill you up,” he says. “Look so pretty with me dripping out of you, making a mess —”

You careen over the edge, fisting the sheets with one hand and dragging your nails down Steve's back with the other. Your eyes shut as you writhe, the waves of your climax rolling over you. You spasm around him, clenching over and over and his hips stutter and you feel him come inside you, the hot warmth coating your walls.

Your breath comes back to you as Steve flops down, still inside you, weight heavy on top of your spent body in the way he knows you like. His hand lazily trails up and down your side.

“Fuck,” he says. You laugh. The post-sex sensations set in, the gentle throb of your cunt where he's still inside you, the wetness of your inner thighs and the soreness of your muscles.

He shifts and you feel how full you are. “Made a mess,” you mutter. He presses a kiss to your temple.

“You made a mess,” he counters. “I mean, the thigh stuff?”

“Steve!” You feel shy all of a sudden.

“It was hot.” He squeezes your hip. “Let's get you cleaned up, yeah?”

He pulls out of you and the soreness stings for just a second. You feel him dripping out of you and feel hot all over again. Steve gets off the bed and heads for the bathroom. You watch him walk there, his cock shiny with you as it softens, the muscles of his legs and his back on display in the dim loft. The scars from various farming chores that you've traced hundreds of times, the skin you know every inch of. You love him. He's yours.

Steve returns from the bathroom and you try not to be self conscious about how you sit exposed on the bed. He's carrying a damp cloth.

“Spread 'em,” he says when he reaches the edge of the bed.

“Sexy,” you say, but do as he says. He snorts but gently cleans you, running the cloth along the insides of your thighs and your tender center. It's impossible not to feel a rush of affection for him as he does, this intimate act that is somewhere between sexual and not. You watch him and feel unbelievably precious in his care. He catches your eye and sees the softness, pressing his lips to your naval, your knee, but saying nothing. Sometimes you just don't need words.

“Let me pee,” you tell him when he finishes. When you return he's sprawled on the bed, boxers on. You pull on your t-shirt and nothing else and crawl up next to him, settling into his side. He drags his fingers along your back. You put your palm over his chest to feel his heartbeat.

“Better Halloween than last year,” he says lightly. The memory of that night isn't as heavy in your post-sex bliss, though it's still around. You've talked about it many times since then and it's in the past but being here reminds you a bit of the fear you felt, the frightening weight of the love you have for Steve. How it shifted your entire world.

Though you know Steve isn't serious, you sit up a little to look him in the eyes.

“I'm never leaving you,” you tell him. He looks a little surprised but recovers quickly, reaching up to cup your face and pull you down.

“I know,” he says. He kisses you gently, reverently.

“I love you,” you say against his lips. He laughs.

“I know that, too,” he says. “I love you back, bee girl.”

thank you for reading <3 reblog, send feedback, general masterlist here! promptober masterlist, find all fics under #fvspromptober23

[mischiefbuckley]

for eddie it’s having to have a conversation with christopher and all the nerves and feelings and emotions and acceptance he will now have to face with finally coming to terms with his sexuality (if it does end up happening in season 8 depending on what happens in the season 7 finale or whenever the start of eddie’s sexuality arc begins) with raising a teenage son and having that freedom that was taken away from him from a young age of becoming a father too soon, being forced into a marriage due to the religious views inflicted upon him from a young age and then going off and enlisting in the army to endure more pain and trauma and come back feeling abnormal and never realizing that he’s been playing a part and hasn’t had the chance to be normal with his true self and finally when he does decide to break away from his family in texas and experience some freedom away from home in a new city and surrounding himself with new people who give him that sense of family that he has never truly felt with his family because they expect something from him as the man of the house

eddie meets buck, which at first he had reservations and didn’t understand why he didn’t like eddie at all. all eddie has wanted is to do right by his son and trying to provide and be there for him. by doing right by his son, he wants him in the best school that is adapting and considerate to his disability of cerebral palsy, eddie wants to be able to please his every want and desire, including reconnecting with his estranged wife to be able to figure out where this relationship goes and what that means for christopher. eddie is still needing to play the part and he enjoys himself in the idea that they would go back to normal, but that’s not the case. unfortunately due to some circumstances out of everyone’s control, shannon passes away after she had just brought up getting a divorce after eddie was going to propose to her and she announced that she wasn’t pregnant at all after her pregnancy scare. eddie after shannon passes away feels this need to continue to chase this image of a perfect family with the dotting wife and working husband with their son. he tries to find shannon in other woman, even going after and seeking a doppelgänger lookalike named kim, because to him that is what is perceived as normal and he never did get closure on shannon. shannon’s ghost continues to haunt eddie in many ways because he ultimately feels like he failed at the one thing he should have been good at. you need to be married to a woman and raise children together and be the provider of the household. those were images and reality that eddie grew up surrounded around because of the culture and religious background from his family.

when all along who has been your day one with christopher. who got you connected with carla, who always made time for you when you wanted to take christopher out, when you needed someone to watch christopher, even when just hanging out during the week and enjoying each other’s company. who made it possibly for your son with cerebral palsy to ride a skateboard and enjoy the memory because buck was able to figure something out. buck has always been in eddie’s corner and cares so much about him as he does his son. eddie trusts buck so much he’s in his will (WHICH IF DOESN’T GET BROUGHT UP IN THE FINALE MISSED OPPORTUNITY) as Christopher’s legal guardian (and I’m guessing buck is also listed as the power of attorney as well with knowing how unhinged he is) eddie reached out for him when he was shot and bleeding out and even eddie while bleeding out in the engine, was still asking buck if he was okay despite him being the one that was shot. eddie and buck have shared multiple heart to heart conversations about each other and how they feel and eddie constantly reminds buck that he does matter, he matters to him so much, he matters to christopher. when eddie was going through leaving the 118 and attending therapy and trying to grasp control over his emotions and how eddie’s afraid that he will “never feel normal.” it’s the fact that buck would go and stay with christopher while eddie would go to therapy and would go and check in on him. with buck getting struck by lightning you see eddie experience pain again in a new light. it’s always buck that has endured these moments of panic whenever something happens to eddie while on call, but we see eddie run after buck and continuously yelling “buck” as he is dangling off the ladder and when they finally do get him down, bobby makes eddie drive the ambulance because it is the only control that eddie has at the moment that he can control because he can’t control what is happening to buck and then the idea of seeing yet again another person you love die in an ambulance isn’t the best way to see your best friend, so driving the ambulance seems like the right call. even while at the hospital, eddie can’t seem to control his emotions even around christopher and we see this when eddie sneaks christopher in the room and he starts asking eddie all these questions and he can’t answer them and it’s hen answering because Eddie is trying to keep it together in front of his son, but can’t help but stare at his best friend while he’s in a coma and not knowing what would happen. everything seems to be well with buck, but eddie memorized the 3 minutes and 17 seconds because that will never leave him. his best friend was dead for 3 minutes and 17 seconds and none of them could do anything about it. he doesn’t try to get buck to adjust to his new reality. he lets him come to eddie and initiate the conversation because he knows that buck will always come to him when he needs to talk.

and coming around back with season 7 and especially after last nights episode and with how eddie and how his storyline is currently going we are introduced to the problem of christopher feeling disconnected and not remembering his mom’s voice, so we get the ghost of shannon as he reads her letter and eddie is trying to figure out how to handle a situation now with his teenage son that he wasn’t prepared for. so he asked buck for help and it’s funny how it goes full circle and ends up going back to eddie and kim, but then we get eddie being social and hanging out with tommy, which good for him he needs to go out and about and enjoy his life like he took on so many different responsibilities and didn’t get to enjoy himself in his early 20s. and yk buck’s jealously (but I’ll circle back to that in a later analysis) but it’s the fact that eddie just found it so easy to hangout and invite tommy to the basketball games and be able to just feel relaxed and excited because he yk writes it on the calendar. then we get the scene between eddie and buck where he comes out to him and like that scene really is something because eddie just stays there and listens to buck. he was more shocked by anything that tommy is gay, but he told buck that nothing would change between them. it’s always buck and eddie at the end of the day. and they hugged and it felt very sweet because it shows that despite anything and everything that can come their way, they will always be there for each other. but with eddie you have him still trying to find closer with the relationship he has with shannon and that’s what the basis of his storyline has been in season 7 with the whole kim plotline. eddie with his relationship with marisol like his previous relationship with ana, it is more if Christopher feels comfortable around them he feels happy. But when have we genuinely heard him go out of his way to talk about them in a way that makes sense for someone to talk about someone that they are in a relationship with.

Especially with yk the season 7 change to ABC, like Marisol is giving nothing to the plotline at all except just being his girlfriend while eddie is doing the whole going after the doppelgänger of his late dead wife and giving more of a dramatic arc to the whole thing. eddie pursuing kim was him trying to grasp some closer on the whole situation between him and Shannon. he is able to control the narrative in his mind and prior to kim showing up at the station with the tray of brownies, eddie had done a decent job at managing to keep all his worlds apart and keep the distance between everything in his life and I think that is his biggest challenge that he has never had to confront reality and that will be a big challenge for him to overcome whenever his sexuality arc comes into play. because currently we left off with season 7 episode 9 on the ending being that eddie was getting off of his chest everything he would have wanted to say to shannon but never got the chance too because she died and in a way kim was trying to help the guy out, but it ended up backfiring in both of their faces because marisol and christopher walk in and christopher immediately calls out and says “mom” and it all just ties back to how neither one of the diaz boys have really accepted and moved on from shannon. eddie in the sense that was his first everything and how could you move on from the death of a spouse, especially after she had asked for a divorce prior to passing away and christopher I mean that was his mom. we have seen that since christopher lost her at a young age, he did attend therapy, but gradually over the years it gets brought up again and again because how will a child ever truly get over the death of their parent. they both have tried to accept and try to move on, but both of their coping throughout the years has been at the best of their ability. eddie is stuck and has been stuck in a place of not being able to move on and still we have the next episode to see what happens, but with this distance and isolation that Ryan talked about Eddie experiencing at the end of season 7, it does make me wonder how this could tie into a potential coming out/acceptance arc for Eddie

anyways some of my random thoughts I’ve had especially after last nights episode so if you read all the way through, thanks homies I ramble a lot I know lmao

[flowerfan2]

Eddie is different, afterwards.  Dustin doesn’t understand why no one is doing anything about it.  It’s like the spark has gone out of him, except with Eddie it wasn’t just a spark, it was fireworks, and now he’s like the old flashlight Dustin once found at the back of his closet that barely flickered.

When Eddie doesn’t even want to play D&D, Dustin tries talking about it with Will.  He tells him he doesn’t know why Eddie can’t just snap out of it, and Will glares at him like he suggested raising another baby demodog.  In retrospect, maybe he shouldn’t have made light of being trapped in the Upside Down with the only other guy he knows who went through the same thing.

Dustin knows Eddie’s gone through some shit, he does.  But the truth is he misses him, misses his confident swagger, his disdain for people who are afraid to wave their freak flag high.  He misses his big smile, and his crazy faces.  He misses the way Eddie took care of his little lost sheep.

The government gave Eddie and Wayne a new trailer, but Dustin hasn’t seen it yet.  Max spends as much time as she can with El or hanging out at the Wheeler’s, saying the trailer park still feels haunted to her.  Dustin wonders what it’s like for Eddie, still being there every day, in the place he saw Chrissy die.

Dustin goes to summer camp again, and for a while he’s able to put it all out of his mind.  Suzie is there, and being with her is awesome.  For four weeks he tries to pretend that the insanity and terror of living in Hawkins is no big deal.  But then he comes back home.

After a few days of riding around town on his bike and hanging out with the party,  Dustin decides to organize a trip to the arcade.  He tries to call Steve for a ride, but there’s no answer at his house, and when he goes to get the walkie Mike stops him, saying he thinks he’s busy.  Dustin protests for a while, but finally gives up when El tells him that the Byers are having a barbeque that weekend and he’ll see Steve then.

Saturday dawns hot and bright, and Dustin puts on his favorite camp shirt and heads over to the Byers’ new house early.  Joyce gives him a warm hug, like always, and he goofs around with Will until Jonathan forces them to help set up chairs in the backyard.  People start arriving around lunchtime, but it isn’t until he’s eaten two ketchup-drenched hot dogs and an overcooked burger that he sees Steve arrive, Eddie trailing close behind him.

He wants to run over and give Eddie a giant hug, better even than the one Dustin got from Joyce, but Robin suddenly appears next to him and puts a hand on his arm to hold him back.  “Let him ease into it,” she says softly.  Dustin doesn’t know why Eddie would need to ease into hanging out with his friends, but something in Robin’s tone tells him not to argue.

Eventually Dustin decides enough is enough.  He finds Eddie in the house, sitting next to Steve on the couch, talking softly with Hopper who is leaning against an armchair.  They all swivel their heads towards him when he pokes his head in, and Hopper nods and leaves the room, grunting some kind of greeting at Dustin as he goes by.

“Hey, what’s up?”  Steve says, and Dustin stumbles over both his feet and his words as he throws himself at the two of them.  Steve catches him and holds him tight, and he feels Eddie wrap an arm around him too.

“I want everyone to be okay,” Dustin mumbles, feeling like an idiot but not able to really say anything else.

“We’re okay, dude, don’t worry,” Steve says.  “I mean, Hopper’s grill skills could use some work, but generally speaking that’s not a big deal.”

“Really?  That’s what you’re going with?  You know that’s not what I mean.”  Dustin pushes out of their hold and sits on the coffee table.  He looks at Eddie, and then Steve, who exchange a weird glance, and then Eddie leans forward.

“I’m sorry, bud.  It really wasn’t my year, I guess. But-” Eddie’s eyes flash over to Steve, who gives him a wry grin and knocks their knees together.  “Things are looking up.  I’m okay.  Really.”

Dustin realizes that Eddie does seem better.  He’s completely lost that gray haze.  Even his hair looks better, bouncier, like Steve has been sharing his secrets.  “Do you swear?” he asks, his throat tight.

Eddie laughs, and it makes something glad and joyful bubble up in Dustin’s chest.  Steve looks happy about it too, and he grabs Eddie around his shoulders and pulls him close to his side, making Eddie laugh some more and then rest his head on Steve’s shoulder.  “Yeah, I swear.”

Dustin hears Nancy announcing something about ice pops, and he decides he better get out there before all the good flavors are taken.  “All right.  Fine.  See you around?”

“For sure,” Eddie says, and it’s a little softer and quieter than maybe Eddie was before, but Dustin still feels that warmth inside him.  Because the spark is back in Eddie’s eyes.  It’s not quite fireworks yet, but it’s there, and it’s awesome.  

[spotsandsocks]

Hiii spotty 💕💕💕

🎃 + rain

-❤️🪐

Saturn you’re the best and knocked so many times at my inbox door. Thank you so much. It’s so much fun to have these little challenges. I hope you like them as they appear over the next 24hrs or so.

So 477 words with rain at the heart of them. We start these prompts with a tiny drip 💧 of angst. 😘

He used to like rain, well maybe that’s an exaggeration but he didn’t hate it. It’s different now and it’s not exactly hate, it’s something else, something that’s maybe worse.

Light showers are fine and as time has passed he’s gotten better at dealing with slightly more intense weather too, it doesn’t stop him going out anymore.

Storms however are different. Thunder keeps him inside. He knows it won’t always be like this, he’ll get better at tolerating them eventually. He will, and at least there tends to be weather warnings for big storms which means he can plan and Bobby will make him man behind without any comment. At least that’s not necessary tonight, they’re off shift and he can hide by himself and no one will know how his heart races or his palms sweat when the flashes come.

Even if he’s under the covers he can still see the flash.

It’s helpful to remind himself that storms don’t last forever and the feelings they generate won’t either. So yes he gets a bit twitchy when the thunder rolls, but it’s understandable isn’t it, it’s not really been that long since it happened. It’s ok to still be working through things.

The knock on his door still makes him jump though, heartbeat accelerating just a little as he startles at the unexpected noise.

He’s not expecting anyone but there’s a limited number of options as to who it might be so maybe he’s not that surprised to open the door and find Eddie standing there. His best friend greets him with a simple ‘Hey,’ and the smallest of smiles.

There are lots of things Eddie could say next, things you might expect him to say to explain why he’s standing on his doorstep unexpected and technically uninvited, (although Eddie never needs an invitation). He might say anything from, ‘I was just passing’ to ‘I know how much you hate storms so I came over’ He might say I fancied a beer or wanna watch the game with me. He could say I was worried about you it’s meant to be bad tonight and maybe all of them would be true but that’s not why he’s here.

There’s a look in his eyes you could call haunted.

Buck knows Eddie and he remembers what he said. How he knew, how he must have counted the seconds, because he knew - he knew precisely; three minutes and seventeen seconds.

It’s a long time to wait for someone to come back. Buck’s always been glad it hadn’t been him doing the waiting this time.

Buck thinks that Eddie doesn’t much like the rain either.

He smiles back and steps aside welcoming him in, because there’s a storm coming and neither of them want to face it alone and that’s ok because they don’t have to. They have each other.

Tagging to share the trick or treating fun 🎃 there’s gonna be more of these so lmk if you don’t want a tag! Or if you do…

@monsterrae1 @dr-shortsighted-owl @thelikesofus @beyourownanchor6 @lonelychicago @bi-buckrights @bekkachaos @thekristen999 @hippolotamus @daffi-990 @dangerpronebuddie @tizniz @stagefoureddiediaz @exhuastedpigeon @theplaceyoustillrememberdreaming @diazheartsbuckley @diazsdimples @saybiwithme @repressedqueen @theotherbuckley @caroandcats

[tillystealeaves]

Steddie Fic- Part 1: Breakup

I don't know what to title this thing, but it's a 3 part story and this is Part 1. Hope you enjoy!!!!

Or read it on AO3.

Steve stood in the living room, not knowing what to do with himself. Eddie would be here soon. Eddie was working that day, at the music store in the town next to Hawkins (where people didn’t care so much about the Hawkins rumor mill), and his shift ended at 4, which meant Eddie would be getting to Steve’s house by around 4:30 because Steve had invited him over, and it was 4:15 now, so Eddie should be here any minute, and if it was a normal night Steve would probably be pulling something out of the oven but tonight-

Steve stopped himself. He took a breath. He couldn’t allow his mind to go on tangents like that or he was going to word-vomit all over Eddie.

Eddie, who would be arriving any minute.

Steve had thought for a long time about whether he wanted to have this conversation in his house. If he wanted the memories of this to be burned into his mind every time that he walked through his living room. But his house was already full of so many ghosts. Barb sat perpetually at the edge of his pool, his mother cried over a glass of wine at the kitchen counter, and his father was… everywhere. Always telling Steve how everything he did was somehow a stain on the Harrington name.

Besides, the alternative was to do this at Eddie’s house and that… he couldn’t do that. Eddie had been living for less than a year in the new double-wide trailer supplied by the government. His old home, even if it hadn’t been ripped to shreds, would have been forever filled with the ghost of Chrissy. Steve couldn’t make bad memories for Eddie in his new one. (Though he was fairly sure that Eddie wouldn’t be particularly haunted by this conversation anyway.)

And then there was the fact that over the past eight months since the Spring Break from Hell, Eddie’s new trailer had come to mean something to Steve. It felt like… home. Like the way a home should feel, in the way his own never had. It felt lived in, even though it was new. With Wayne’s mug collection and replacement posters tacked up on Eddie’s wall. With music playing or the TV on mute in the living room, coffee brewing in the kitchen because between Eddie’s and Wayne’s work schedule, it was always breakfast time for someone. Steve had felt welcomed there. Safe. Like he belonged. He refused to poison those memories for himself with what was about to happen.

“Stevie?”

Eddie’s voice pulled Steve from his thoughts. He wondered if Eddie had just let himself in or if he’d been knocking for minutes with no answer. Well, Steve figured he could always blame his damaged hearing if Eddie complained about waiting too long.

“Hey Eds.”

Eddie was smiling, warm and easy. Steve tried to freeze the moment in his mind. Sometimes memories were getting lost inside his head- the doctors said it would continue to happen, a side effect of too many head injuries. But Steve swore to himself that he would never let his brain lose this image of Eddie so happy just from arriving at Steve’s house.

Almost as soon as Steve had made a note to remember Eddie’s smile, it vanished. Suddenly, Eddie looked concerned. He approached Steve and put his hands on his shoulders. His long fingered hands, warm, with calluses that that had ghosted over Steve’s arms, his back, his hair- Steve bit the inside of his cheek and pulled himself back into the moment. “What’s up, Steve? You look… less like a ray of sunshine than usual. Something wrong? Is it a migraine?”

Steve stepped back, outside of Eddie’s grip. “No, my head’s fine. I just… can we talk for a minute?”

Eddie sank down on the couch and immediately began fiddling with his rings, his head angled so that his hair was falling in front of his face. “Yeah, of course we can. Um… did I do something wrong?”

His voice sounded so small. Gods, Steve didn’t know if he would be able to do this if Eddie was going to be sad. The whole point was to make Eddie happy- not tonight, of course. Steve knew tonight would sting. But it wouldn’t hurt Eddie. And in the long run, Eddie would be happy. He would be-

“Stevie? You’re sort of scaring me, baby. Did something bad happen? Like, Upside Down bad?”

“No,” Steve answered quickly. He rushed to the couch and sat down, putting his hand reassuringly on Eddie’s knee. (He ignored the voice in his head whispering that this might be the last moment that they touched.) “No, it’s nothing like that. I just-” He had to just do it. He had to put words to what he wanted least in the world, but what he knew was the right thing. “I think we need to stop this thing between us.”

Steve dared to glance up at Eddie, but found that he couldn’t see anything of his expression. His right hand pulled his hair across his face and into his mouth while his left hand fiddled frantically with the rips on his jeans. “Okay.” Eddie’s voice was thick. Was he going to cry? Steve didn’t think this would make him cry. “If that’s what you want, of course, ba- Steve. But is there anything I can do to fix it? I mean, could you maybe tell me what’s not working for you and I can do it better?”

“You didn’t do anything, Eds,” Steve assured him. Eddie had to know that this was absolutely not his fault. It was Steve’s fault, 100%. “It’s just… when two people want different things out of a relationship, someone’s going to end up unhappy. And I don’t want to ever make you unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy!” Eddie protested. He looked up and even through his hair, Steve could see his eyes were red and wet. Steve looked down at the floor. “Are you unhappy? What am I doing to make you unhappy?”

Steve swallowed past the burning lump in his throat. He really hadn’t expected Eddie to put up a fight. He had expected him to agree, maybe give him a parting hug or maybe say that he was relieved that Steve hadn’t made Eddie have to do this himself. He had hoped that Eddie would say they could still be friends, or at minimum be cool with each other for the sake of the kids. But if this is what Eddie needed from him, he could spell it out.

“You’re not doing anything to make me unhappy. Look, I talked to Robin about this a lot, trying to figure out the best way to handle it. She said I couldn’t keep avoiding it by just wishing that we could stay this way forever. Sometimes, one person in a relationship just expects more out of it than what it is. And if they don’t talk about it, that person is going to get their heart broken. And the other person is going to get sick of them. I don’t want that for us. I don’t want resentment or hurt feelings or- I just think we should stop this where it is. It’s been so great, Eddie.” Steve heard his voice break at that; he hoped Eddie hadn’t noticed. “It’s been really good, but I think we should stop it here before it turns into something bad.”

With his eyes still pointed resolutely at the carpet, Steve could only feel Eddie nod. He heard Eddie take a deep, shaky breath and then felt the couch lift as Eddie stood. “Okay, yeah. Message received. I’ll get out of your hair. Um… bye, Steve.”

Steve didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Even with his terrible hearing, every step Eddie took towards the door reverberated through his head and his chest and his heart. He stayed motionless, barely breathing, as the front door squeaked open and clicked shut. It was only when the sound of Eddie’s rickety van faded that he fell forward onto the couch- still warm from Eddie’s body- and allowed himself to sob.

Read the next part: Interlude 1

[lonelychicago]

buck/eddie | drabble | idk how many words i just wrote this and then here we are.

eddie's been agonizing about telling buck how he feels for weeks, he's been making this speech in his mind and changing it a thousand times. and it's not that he's scared or he's nervous (although he is a bit) bc he knows buck feels the same... he is 90% sure.

okay! fine! maybe 85% sure, whatever.

but! eddie is pretty sure it's mutual. it's just that there's a lot on the line, the risk is so high and everything needs to be perfect.

buck deserves perfect.

so anyway, the point it's been almost a month and he's had so many opportunities but somehow he always chickens out at the last second. the words stay lodged in his throat.

until one night he just blurts it out— they're in the kitchen, because of course they are, their most important moments always seem to happen there nowadays. and buck looks so beautiful, so... out of a dream, straight out of eddie's most secret fantasies. and buck turns around and he smiles at eddie, that lopsided kind of smirk that makes him feel things. what was he supposed to do?

the words come out before he can fully think about what he's doing. one minute they're just best friends, hanging out in the kitchen... and the next, eddie changes them forever.

he says the words and something shifts, something changes and he knows deep down there's not turning back.

they can go from there, right?

but then— buck doesn't react like he thought he would. and listen, in a perfect world buck would feel the same and he would beam at eddie and then he would lean in to kiss him. and yet, eddie would've still accepted buck letting him down gently. it would've hurt, but eddie could've take it.

none of those things happen, though. no.

instead, buck frowns at him and he takes a step back like eddie just physically slapped him in the face.

"what the hell, man?"

and then buck—

buck leaves. he walks away and eddie can only stand there in the middle of his kitchen with a million of questions haunting him and his heart broken to pieces on the floor.

in the thousands of scenarios he pictured in his head of how this would go, it never even crossed his mind that buck would react like this.

he never thought buck would leave him.

and you know what? fuck this, eddie won't let him do this.

-

by the time he arrives to buck's loft, the jeep is already parked and the man is nowhere in sight.

eddie spent the whole way here working himself up, thinking what he'll say to buck and now he's just so—angry.

and hurt, and sad and a lot of other emotions he doesn't want to unpack right now. so, we're going with angry.

when buck opens the door to his apartment, eddie charges in.

"what the fuck, buck? you can't just leave like that! and not when—"

"not when what, eddie?" buck slams the door closed and turns to him, matching his anger.

his blue eyes are dark, red and puffy around the edges like he's been crying, his hair looks disheveled like he's passed his fingers through it a thousand times and his cheeks are flushed a slight red. his jaw is locked and his shoulders are so tense, his posture is stiff...

buck is pissed.

and eddie doesn't get it.

"what the fuck? why are you mad at me?"

"because!" buck yells. "because you were mean and honestly eddie? it was unnecessary and i never thought—"

"you think my feelings for you are unnecessary?

"stop saying you have feelings for me!"

"but i do! what do you want me to say, buck? i do! i'm so in love with you it hurts, i'm so in love with you that it's a little pathetic sometimes." eddie groans, rubbings his hands over his face and then facing buck head on once again.

the blonde now looks more shocked than anything and he's blanking rapidly. "w-what? no, y-you're lying."

"why would i lie?"

"because it's april's fools and if you're playing some kind of cruel prank on me, i swear to god, eddie—"

horror dawns on him and eddie hates himself a little for not realizing it.

"buck—" he sighs.

"it's come too far, okay, man? ha ha i get it, now just—"

"i'm not pranking you!" eddie cuts him off, stepping closer and closer until their noses almost touch and their breath mix in the small space between them. "i'm not pranking you, okay? this is real. i'm sorry my timing made you think i was pranking you, but i'm not." eddie cups buck's cheek, his thumb ghosting softly over his birthmark above his eye. "i'm not, buck. please."

"you love me?"

"i do."

and then buck it's kissing him, hard and demanding but it quickly turns soft, and careful. exploring.

eddie makes a soft noise at the back of his throat and returns the kiss.

finally.

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

Stranger Things

Where the 20 Chain Links Lead by fandsart

Steve has always known he’s stupid. While it wasn’t exactly something he took pride in, it hadn’t really ever bothered him until he started socializing with what could probably be described as some of the smartest people in Hawkins. It doesn’t help that most of those people were so much younger than him.

A character study of one Steve Harrington, and a glacial slowburn Steddie fix-it fic

chat with you, baby (flirt a little, maybe) by desiccatedwithering (acornsofthemind) (+ podfic)

"Hey, shitheads!” Steve “the hair” Harrington barks, looming in the doorway like a monster from the Abyss. “What the fuck are you doing in here? Get your asses down to the gym right fucking now.”

Eddie gapes. First of all, the audacity— Second, he’s never been much for physical fights, but if this douchebag thinks he can bully any of Eddie’s kids, he’ll have to go through Eddie first.

“Let’s go! Move it!” Harrington snaps, making an impatient gesture down the hall.

SVSSS

Achievement Unlocked by The Feels Whale (miscellea)

One day, after five years of reasonably peaceful marriage with only a few kidnappings and sex pollen incidents, Shen Yuan is sent back to his old body without warning. Luo Binghe makes a deal with an alien entity calling itself the System to perform a mission in exchange for the ability to bring his husband home.

The mission is simple; [Uncover secret transmigrator plotline and flesh out the character wiki!]

At least it will be once he figures out what the words ‘transmigrator’ and ‘wiki’ mean.

Or: That one where Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe don’t realize they’re in a domestic fluff bonus chapter.

Written for the 2021 MXTX Big Bang with art created by Ataratah

The Witcher

The Footsteps We Follow by thiswildheart

Look, Jaskier's got a lot going on. He's painfully aware that there are cataclysmic events happening and that the troubled teenager he knows might save the world or speed along the end of days. He's also in love with a man who's never even admitted that they're friends, which is almost as bad.

Oh, and he's still working as the Sandpiper, only now a terrifying eldritch creature has entrusted him with the Song of the Seven to give hope to the elves and help them fight back against their oppression. It's probably the bravest thing he's ever done, but not everyone sees it that way.

Luckily he knows some people who excel at last minute rescues.

... then he just has to figure out how to tell Geralt why so many people are trying to kill him. This is going to go great.

Clone Wars

Every Shadow by Kenobster (kenobster)

The days on Kadavo were long, but the nights moved quickly. Hundreds of pairs of wide, sleepless eyes haunted the space of the holding cells. Droves of terror clogged the heavy, sweaty air, and every sound, however faint, was like a physical ripple across the crowd. Every sound. The jingling of keys, the clicking of locks, the thudding of boots, and that’s how the nights on Kadavo started—with a gradual increase in the degree of quiet.

OR—during the mass casualty event following Kadavo and Zygerria, Obi-Wan and Anakin seek ways to cope with trauma.

Shadowhunters

We All Want (to Change the World) by opalish

It starts with Simon, which explains why the entire process is such an unrelenting headache.

or, Alec's startlingly quick journey from Head of the New York Institute to Inquisitor.

[ladykailitha]

Little Runaway Part 7

Oh my god you guys, seriously you all are amazing. I am really loving the reactions to this story. There is just one more part to go and it’s a sweet little epilogue. This is the showdown. The moment you’ve all been waiting for.

Also if you asked to be tagged after the limit of twenty, I’m sorry. I have the limit for a reason. I’m not doing it because I’m being elitist or whatever, my poor little ADHD brain starts getting frustrated and wanting to cry just doing the 20 I’ve got, but I do it because it makes me happy people want to be informed the next time a part goes up. I don’t know how people with dozens do it.

Plus tagging adds more time putting up the parts. Something that would take five minutes on AO3 (because they keep track of all the chapters for you) could take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour depending on how many parts there are, and how many have been put up (I go and crosslink on EVERY part to make sure if a part in the middle gets found in the wild all by its lonesome the person can read the previous and subsequent parts). Add tagging to that and you can see the time starts to really add up. 

Again thank you for all the love and support this little story has gotten. The last part will be up tonight after I eat dinner and then (cold permitting) I’ll put up the first part of Ser Stephan of Harring’s Town before I go to bed.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

*

Eddie walked into the police station and right up to Hopper’s desk. He leaned on it with both hands and stared directly into Hopper’s eyes.

“I need you to arrest me,” he bit out. “Now.”

“What the hell?” Hopper asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Mr Harrington knows I know where Steve is,” he breathed. “I can’t let him get to me to get to Steve. If you need a reason, I have two baggies of weed in my jacket pocket. Please. I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

Hopper gulped. “Well there is a rumor you kidnapped him, so...”

Eddie nodded and held out his hands together at the wrist. “Save him, please.”

*

Steve was sitting on the sofa reading when Wayne came home from work.

“Where’s Eddie?” he asked on his way to the fridge.

Steve shrugged. “He just said he had errands to run.”

Wayne came back with two beers and handed one to Steve. Steve swung his feet off the sofa to let Wayne sit down. Steve set the book down and popped the lid off his bottle and then did the same for Wayne’s when the older man raised an eyebrow.

“Neat trick,” Wayne said, taking a swig.

Steve shrugged. “Turns out years of baseball, basketball, and swimming make you a strong person. I don’t do those things anymore, but I keep working out to keep that strength up.”

“That how you were able to break Clint’s nose?” Wayne asked.

“Yeah,” Steve murmured. “I didn’t mean to, I don’t know how much to hold back when punching, because when I hit most of the time there is no holding back.”

“What have you got to be hitting that needs to be hit that hard, boy?” he asked.

Steve’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t tell you. I can get into a lot of trouble if I tell people. The only ones that know are the ones that have seen it for themselves. But I have seen things that have made grown men shit their pants. I have been hunted by things that would haunt the nightmares of the hardest of souls. I have been actually tortured and drugged. And yet face to face with my own father and I chickened out like a bitch.”

Wayne stared at the boy that should have had the dream life. Rich parents, everything he could have asked for. But instead nothing but heartache and loss for this kid. Because despite Steve almost being twenty, he was still a kid.

He put his hand on Steve’s shoulder and was about to say something when the phone rang. He frowned and got up to answer it.

As he said hello, a curly haired teenager in a trucker hat came barreling through his front door.

“Steve!” Dustin yelled. “Someone at Hellfire snitched and your dad is on his way here.”

Steve worked to calm Dustin while Wayne listened to the other person on the other end of the line, making the appropriate noises. Then he hung up.

“You must be Dustin,” Wayne said coming back over to the sofa.

Dustin looked over at Wayne as if he was seeing him for the first time. “Oh. Yeah. Um...sorry. For barging in like that, but I really needed to see Steve.”

Wayne chuckled. “Don’t worry, your friend here is going to be just fine.” He cocked his head to the side. “How did you get here so fast? I just barely got the call myself what was going down.”

“My mom drove me,” Dustin said, staring at the floor.

“Claudia is here?” Wayne asked. Dustin nodded. “Good. The more the merrier.” He turned to Steve. “Under the sink, behind the Draino is your bag. It’ll be up to you to decide what you want to do with it.”

Steve nodded.

Wayne walked outside.

There standing in a semi-circle was Claudia Henderson, Joyce Byers, and Sheriff Jim Hopper. Standing off to the side, was Eddie who was hugging his ribs. Wayne joined the semi-circle just as Clint Harrington pulled up to the trailer park and got out of his car.

“Sheriff!” Clint yelled. “I want that man arrested for kidnapping my son!” He pointed angrily at Eddie, who looked down.

“I don’t know about that,” Wayne said. “Hey, Steve! You being held against your will?”

Dustin and Steve came out of the trailer slowly, the backpack slung over one shoulder.

“No, sir,” Steve said, looking his father in the eye. “I am not.”

“Liar!” Clint bellowed. “Don’t you be believing a word out of his mouth. He’s been brainwashed.”

“No I haven’t,” Steve said, feeling a little bit more bold knowing he had people who would protect him.

“You leave that boy alone,” Joyce said. “He’s gone through enough.”

Claudia crossed her arms. “Agreed.”

“You better get out of my way,” Clint growled.

Hopped pulled out a piece of paper and held it up. “This here is a warrant for your arrest for the assault of Steven Harrington.”

Clint laughed. “You can’t prove a god damn thing.”

“Actually we can,” Hopper continued. “Steve was smart enough to take pictures after your little tussle and the bruises will match up with your ring.”

Clint went to work it off his finger, but Wayne stepped up to stop him. “I think I’ll be taking that for the Sheriff if you don’t mind.”

Clint growled, but handed it over. He walked back over to Hopper who was holding a baggy for Wayne to drop it into. Hopper sealed the bag and stuck it in his pocket.

“What do you say, Steve?” Hopper called over his shoulder. “Should we lock up this bastard and throw away the key?”

Steve held out his hand to Eddie. Eddie looked at it, unsure and then came over to take it. Steve pressed his forehead to Eddie’s. “What do you think I should do?”

Eddie cupped Steve’s face with his free hand. “You know what to do. You’re a good person, Steve. Do what feels right.”

“You fag, get away from my son!” Clint shouted. He tried to push past the four adults, but they closed ranks and wouldn’t let him through.

Steve breathed in.

“You’ve got this, baby,” Eddie assured him.

Steve nodded. He stepped away from Eddie and tossed the backpack at his dad. “Everything you want is in there. Just take it and leave. Know this. If I or any of my friends see you in Hawkins ever again, the Sheriff will arrest you.”

Hopper grinned. “I like that plan.”

“I’ll cut you off!” Clint snarled. “You’ll be penniless and homeless without me, you ingrate!”

Steve laughed. “I could stay at any number of these fine people’s houses and be welcome for as long as I needed. And as for penniless? I’ve already got a job lined up that I think will make me very happy. And maybe if I’m lucky, a boy who loves me.” He turned to Eddie, who was blushing deep.

Wayne chuckled. “You heard the man, Clint. Get the hell out of Dodge and stay the fuck away from my boys.”

Clint growled and stalked off to his car, the tires peeling out on the gravel as he tore out of the trailer pack as if the hounds of hell were on his tail.

Steve shook his head. “Doesn’t he know that’s bad for his tires?”

Everyone turned to look at Steve in shock and amazement before bursting into laughter.

Claudia took Dustin home and Hopper took Joyce, leaving Steve with the Munsons.

“Is it over?” Eddie asked.

“I’d give Clint a couple days to clear out,” Wayne said. “But yeah. I think it’s over.”

“Does this mean I can stay?” Steve asked, looking up through his lashes.

Wayne rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I was thinking of upgrading to a double wide with two bedrooms. I think we could just about afford it if you help pay rent.”

Steve lit up and turned to Eddie. “You hear that? You’re stuck with me now.”

Eddie smiled and leaned in. “I think it’s the other way round. You’re stuck here with me.”

Steve smiled softly. “And I couldn’t be happier.”

Epilogue

Tag List: @tauntedperfume  @marivictal @eddiemunsonswife @namelessssho @dbquills @goodolefashionedloverboi @steve-the-hairrington @sadcanadianwinter @yearningagain @books-are-my-life-since-1996 @swimmingbirdrunningrock @homohomohoe @knightofthieves @flusteredcas @moonage-daydreaming @goblin-eddie @marvelousforlife @silversnaffles @satan-is-obsessed @yikes-a-bee

[sidekickjoey]

You're On Your Own, Kid (You Can Face This)

Graphics & writing by: @sidekickjoey Beta: @steddieasitgoes Art by: @ja0netholmes/@bittlebarnes and @danadaria Part of @steddiebang 2023

Read on Ao3

A week out from Robin leaving and everything about his world changing, Steve finds himself both closer and impossibly further away from knowing what his future holds.

Chapter 5 - Pick The Petals (preview under the cut)

It’s a week out from Robin leaving for Connecticut, and Steve still hasn’t asked Eddie.

It’s rather upsetting, knowing he needs to do something but feeling so physically incapable of doing so. Steve has wrestled with the feeling for some time now, waking with it haunting him like a ghost and hearing its taunts as he falls asleep in Robin’s spare bed and his colder one back home. He isn't even really sure what he is so afraid of, which complicates things astronomically. Asking Eddie a simple question that would solve all of his problems with one yes shouldn’t be scary. If anything, doing so as soon as possible should be something he jumps to do, just to end his suffering.

And yet, Steve can’t bring himself to do it.

At the beginning of this torment, when Robin let him go free from her house, he had claimed he needed to wait a bit. He couldn’t just up and leave Hawkins in the middle of his spat with his parents and expect to not be followed like a hawk, after all. It would be better, he reckoned, to wait. An unsuspecting foe is better than one on guard. Robin had reluctantly agreed, and with a pinky-swear promise that he’d get to leaving eventually, he was let off. 

By day three, when Robin revived the conversation moments before handing in her resignation letter to Keith, Steve had changed his story. His new claim was that he was waiting to see Eddie to make the first move. ‘Can’t ask the guy something if he isn’t around, you know?’ Robin’s eyes had never rolled quite so far into her head, especially given Steve not only had Eddie’s number in his possession, but also access to it in the Family Video database before him. But, she held her tongue, and Steve held on to his excuses. 

The weekend should have been where all excuses ran out. Eddie was among a number of close friends invited over for a movie night at the Wheeler household, as was Steve. The guy most definitely would be present and available for Steve to talk to about this, or really anything for that matter. However, despite Eddie casting curious looks his way and trying to start up conversations about how he’s doing, practically begging for an in, Steve managed to not go through with asking him. He let Eddie go, leaving his future slip perpetually back in limbo and refusing to do anything else. 

Now, he knows he is only a matter of hours, not days, from his hesitancy becoming a problem. He knows his friends are slowly but surely on their way out. He knows that his window to head out with them, and to do so with Eddie by his side, is slipping away like they are. Nancy and Jonathan had even brought up leaving earlier than planned at the movie night. Argyle wants to go sight-seeing with them before all three end up muddled with work and responsibilities for ‘the man,’ as he put it. Jonathan doesn’t want to leave him hanging, especially when his ticket to NYU is sitting in his drawer placing a ticking clock on their in-person friendship. Nancy is too kind to let him do so, so it’s as good of a done deal as any.

Robin is set to leave on Friday. Her parents, ever adamant about following their only daughter off to her new start, are eager to take their time and move her into her new dorm room together. Steve is grateful to know she won’t be all on her own to do so. However, he also knows this means he's only got a few days left to figure things out with her around and, sue him, he's not ready to lose her yet. He wants to sit down and plan with her like the entire party used to plan for Vecna. He wants to make sure with her that everything is air-tight about his plan so that he won't screw up his words and scare Eddie off. The thought of going into all of that alone is enough to keep him up at night. Unsurprisingly, it does. He mourns her absence before it even comes and, worse then, neglects to reach out to her for fear he may never let her leave.

All his worries, fears, and stressors come to a head on Monday afternoon, when Steve is fresh off of a stint at Family Video. The day had been a hectic one, filled with a few large parties of middle schoolers looking to rent out any movie they could get their grubby little hands on. With Robin gone, Steve had been the only one around to fend them off. After nearly losing his voice ordering them around and threatening baselessly to quit more than five times, he's exhausted. He wants nothing more when he arrives home than to feel the sweet embrace of a shower and the comfort of a quiet bedroom, away from anyone and anything that could bother him. As such, he doesn't think twice about pushing inside his home and running up the stairs to it. 

His mother, however, does. 

[liminalpebble]

Eddie's Education: Chapter 7

Minors DNI

Masterlist link

Chapter 7

Early October descended on Hawkins with a chill in the air as hints of orange and red peeked out from the foliage, promising a riot of color soon. This was Leia's favorite time of year, and it cheered her up to see the grinning faces of more and more jack-o-lanterns popping up on front porches each day she walked past.

The smell of bonfires, the caramelized sugary aroma of toasted marshmallows, and the sharp scent of crisp apples wafted around her as she strode down the lanes and side streets to and from work. It occurred to her that, though she would never drive again, she rather enjoyed the view of the world as one walked. It was slower, more physical, more contemplative. She liked to observe and thought best on her feet while trudging the anxiety out of her muscles.

From the sidewalk she could hear laughter from backyard parties. Costumed keggers and barbecues, football games, farmers' markets, charming haunted houses, and corn mazes made their appearances and she was beginning to feel her old itch for the seasonal fun. She liked these events (well, except for the football games) and had forgot this about herself during her time with Sam. Leia fished through her mind, searching for other joys she had forgotten, finding all kinds of things; horror movies, and dance lessons, and drawing, and museums visits, and comic books. How had she forgotten so much about herself...about who she is and what she wanted?”

Suddenly, in the torrent of recollection, she remembered that she used to love hiking and exploring abandoned buildings. She loved the exhilaration of trudging through the woods, or long abandoned places and had yet to explore the forested or forgotten Indiana trails. She wondered if Eddie liked hiking (or at least getting high in the woods) as much as she did. Down girl, she warned herself, you don't stand a chance with him.

But she really, really, wished she did, and today as her feet traversed the pavement she found herself vacillating in that ever-present argument with herself. Every time she considered that soon Eddie would get his GED and no longer be a student, theoretically allowing her to move closer, something would pipe up from other parts of her mind.

Well what if he wants to come back and get his associate's? Then I might even be his instructor and that would be so so wrong.

What makes you think he would like you anyway? If he did, wouldn't he have made a move already?

The more negative these sentences became, the more they sounded like Sam. She sighed as she thought about her ex. Leia could almost see him adjusting his retro glasses as he looked down his nose at her. She remembered his clipped voice as it said, “How far do you really think you can get here? You'd have a better chance in Hawkins, anyway. Compared to the locals you'd seem like an intellectual giant. It'd be easy.”

She'd said, “Sam! That's a fucked up thing to say! Just because it's a small town doesn't mean everyone's a hillbilly and an idiot...and what do you mean 'seem'.” She crossed her arms and frowned.

He ran an agitated hand through his pretty mop of glossy red hair, as if her words were flies he could shoo off with flicks of his fingers. He was always vain about his rare hair, and his striking green eyes, and his delicate elvish features, but pretended very hard not to be. “Come on, Leia. It's not my job to bolster your fragile ego. We both know you're not stupid, but you're not Einstein. Don't give me that look! We need to be mature about critiques. We have a more evolved relationship than these people who throw flowers and candy at each other and pretend like the other person is some kind of god or goddess. Relentless honesty is best, even when it hurts,” he declared proudly, flipping pages as he talked to her, not even bothering to meet her eyes. She couldn't help but notice how this constant nitpicking only ever seemed to go one way in their relationship.

“Save it for your paper on Hemingway, or when you're jerking off to Bukowski or some other dead pretentious asshole,” she said in a tone teetering between playful sarcasm and genuine anger.

“Ouch...jealous, are we?” he'd asked with a disarming smile, as if it had all been a joke she was just a bit too dim to see the humor in. Sam Huxley had convinced her that she had no right to be hurt, so she pretended not to be and laughed it off with him. Being with Sam had taught her keep the pain to herself and nurse the wounds he inflicted in silence, to not show weakness or need. He praised her practiced stoic nonchalance after he would mercilessly pull apart her thesis, or her body, or her hobbies, or her tastes. It was the only time he ever praised her. She mastered this controlled response, eventually training herself to stop feeling anything about it at all, or having any preferences, because his came first. And she hardly came at all. Her family just thought he was “making her stronger” and liked him for it. They recognized their own impossible expectations for her in his, so it felt right and reinforced their every belief.

When he'd suddenly broken up with her and told her he was staying in Chicago, with no preamble or warning, she cried in front of him for the first time. He responded angrily, snipping out, “Why do you have to cause a scene and try to make me feel bad, as if I've done something wrong? If a man wants to be great he cannot be weighed down by these foolish traditional constructs. I have so much further to go still, Leia. I know you're smart enough to see that, right? I can't waste my potential with you hanging on my arm.”

She had only nodded. Sniffing her tears away brusquely, she immediately began packing. As she sorted the accumulated evidence of her life over the last 5 years, it felt as if she was packing someone else's things. Leia wasn't sure who this person was. There were only meager scraps of evidence among her belongings indicating what she actually liked and wanted in life; long-unworn dance shoes, an abandoned sketchbook, snapshots from forest hikes...things that were a part of who she was before Sam remade her, Pygmalion-style into what he could tolerate...but apparently couldn't anymore.

Those things were so few, so small, and buried like corpses in the bottom of her drawers. Here lies my dead ambitions, she thought with a smirk through her tears. In the collection she discovered an antique photograph of her great-aunt and namesake; the original Violetta Vespero. Her dark eyes burned like coals as she stood in a black halo of thick hair, rebellion blazing and coloring her expression even through the drab grayscale. She had been a suffragette, an Italian aristocrat turned fiercely independent and decidedly socialist. She never wanted children and never had them, insisting on a scholarly career in a world of people telling her she couldn't. Leia sighed, wishing she believed in some kind of spirituality, wishing she could call upon her like a patron saint of feminism to help her through this.

What would she think of me? A weak woman who did whatever a man said for 5 years and then was thrown out like an old pair of shoes? She'd probably be disappointed, just like everyone else in this family.

By May, she found herself standing in her empty new apartment in Hawkins with just a few moving boxes, packed with the little pieces of herself, to keep her company. She let out a long sigh, staring at the empty room. Digging out the photograph of Violetta she whispered to it, “blank slate,”as she placed it reverently on the table.

----

Eddie walked down the basement hall of Hawkins community college coming from his science class, when he heard a familiar low sweet voice reading aloud. He felt a little jolt of giddiness when he realized this must be her English class. He'd never seen her teaching in her element before so he risked peeking in, hoping he wouldn't disturb her.

The lights were out except for some fake candles on the floor with paper decorations around it to make it resemble a campfire. All the students were sitting cross-legged around it. Eddie would think that these adults would be rebellious and resistant, or at least take a nap in the darkness, but in the dim light he could see all eyes were on her as she read with a flashlight. He grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. It was amazing that she could do this; convince grown-ups to enjoy ghost stories by the campfire like little kids, determined to make it a game.

Legs crossed and pumps discarded behind her, she read from The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson:

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.' Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course. 'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?' Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”

Leia closed the book, marking her page, and passed the reading flashlight to the student next to her saying, “Okay, before we read further, what do you think this means?”

Hands went up, and she picked one. “I think...I think it's about not letting people walk all over you and saying what you want. Like Eleanor was shit on her whole life, you know, and now she's finally putting her foot down and doing what she wants.”

“Great interpretation, Frank. Thank you. Anyone else have thoughts about that?”

Eddie watched, smitten, warm eyes full of pride and admiration. In the darkness she hadn't seen him, which he was glad for, sliding back out as quietly as he had peeked in.

Yeah, Leia, don't let them take your cup of stars, Eddie thought as he walked on. You deserve the whole sky, sweetheart.

@sunflowerdaydreamer

[theshippirate22]

All Too Well (Steddie Version)

part 3! part 1 part 2

or read it on ao3!

Steve woke with a start, choking out a strangled gasp as he tried to regain his bearings. It was disconcerting to wake from the dream- more of a memory, really- because it had been so long since he’d slept deep enough to have one.

Almost instinctively, he reached for Eddie, a reflex from long nights haunted by nightmares. Though the dream he had come from wasn’t a nightmare, his hands finding nothing but the lifeless frame of the pillows he slept with pressed against his back to fill something missing in him, was. 

He gripped the sheets, trying to remember how to breathe. Stupid, so freaking stupid. He reprimanded internally, drowning in shame. Eddie is gone. Move. On. So freaking stupid.

He glanced at the alarm clock. Almost six. That had to be some kind of record. He’d managed to sleep for three and a half hours uninterrupted. 

Must be because of the rain, part of him thought. The rest of him wasn’t so stupid. 

It’s because he was with Eddie. 

Thankfully, six in the morning wasn’t such an ungodly time to get out of bed. He still laid there for a few minutes, trying to see if sleep would return to him, though he knew it wouldn’t And it didn’t. He got up, made the bed, and changed into a new, still dirty hoodie. He didn’t want to do laundry but cycling through dirty clothes was better than wearing the same thing for weeks. 

The coffee maker was loud and uncomfortable, just like it always was. Steve sat on the island counter, legs dangling, ankles crossed, and arms pulled into himself to fight the cold from the rain, still pouring outside. 

It felt like he had just been here, in this kitchen, even though he knew very well he hadn’t even gotten out of bed the day before. The dream was screwing with him too much. 

Eddie had been over there, in that chair, when I’d found him.

Steve swallowed hard. He could picture it all too well, that night. Even as he thought of it, the feeling pulsed weakly inside him, like hearing someone’s heartbeat when you lay your head on their chest.

Why a heartbeat? Why the hell was that what he thought of? Something along those lines would mean that not only were he and Eddie dead, but they were already gone and buried, almost three months in the grave. 

And yet, if someone had understood, Steve would’ve come back swearing the pulse was the same as it had been all that time ago. Just as fast and strong and true, only repressed and ostracized until Steve could make it silent at his will. 

Steve drank his coffee in silence and didn’t look at Eddie’s chair.

Eddie stirred first, stretching weakly from where he laid so he didn’t elbow Steve, who was still very much asleep. He yawned and leaned over to kiss the side of Steve’s face and down his neck.

Steve, lying on his stomach with his face pressed in the pillow to fight the soft light bleeding through the trailer window, groaned but didn’t swat him away. 

Eddie hovered over him, trailing his lips softly down his bare shoulders, counting the moles and freckles on his back, running his fingers lightly across his spine. He hummed contentedly against his warm skin, against the little divot at the back of his neck. 

He got no reaction from Steve, so he rolled his eyes playfully, kissed a final time between his shoulder blades, and pushed up off him. 

“Hey! Hey.” Steve moaned sleepily, catching his wrist as he tried to get his feet on the floor, and tugged him impatiently back under the sheets. “Where‘re you goin’? Stay ‘ere.”

“Oh, now he answers,” Eddie teased, poking at Steve and trying to free his arm from his grip. “Don’t you have to go work?”

“Rob’ll cover me.”  Steve pushed him back, half propped on the pillows, half against the headboard, so he could throw his arm over his chest and bury his face in his neck. “Jus’ five more min’es.”

Eddie chuckled into the top of his head, carding his left hand through Steve’s mussed bedhead and interlocking his right hand with the one Steve had pinning him down. He murmured, “You look pretty.”

“Me?”

“No, I accidentally saw my reflection.” Eddie scoffed. “Yes, you. You look pretty. I’m not trynna tease you either, I’m serious.”

Steve drew their linked hands softly to his face, running Eddie’s knuckles and the back of his hand gently over his lips in answer. 

Eddie’s hand crept from his hair, rubbing down his shoulder and the whole expanse of his upper arm- his forearm was buried under his stomach so Eddie couldn’t reach it- and the softest, most perfect lethargic silence filled in between them. 

Eddie had almost gone back to sleep, fairly certain Steve had done the same, when Steve mumbled, “I wanna tell the kids.”

“’Bout what?”

Steve didn’t answer. It was like he hadn’t said anything at all. That was answer enough. Only one thing was taboo enough to keep it from the kids. 

About us.

“Steve...”

“I know. I know we can’t.” Steve contradicted quickly. “That’s okay; I understand why. I just... I want everyone to know that I’m...”

“Happy?” Eddie offered, trying to hide the fact that he’d been thinking the same thing.

Steve bit his lip. “Yeah. It's... been a long time...” He sighed. “I just... they’ve been through so much, and... and I want them to know that it’s... it’s gonna turn out okay for us. All of us.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the lesson they’re gonna learn if you get hate-crimed, Steve.”

“I know. It’s just... not fair.” Steve didn’t even care if they came after him; he’d dealt with much worse than a town of conservative homophobes. The problem was Eddie. He couldn’t have them come after Eddie. It had been hard enough trying to rid him of suspicion after Hopper had cleared all the murder charges, this would only make them riot. 

He had made a promise to protect Eddie, and he intended to keep it. 

He took a deep breath, watching how Eddie shivered under him as he let it out.

God, he was so pretty. The scars on Eddie’s stomach were hot and tight under Steve, matching the ones covering his own torso. Steve’s weren’t nearly as bad though- they hadn’t been as deep- and Eddie’s hands were warm and rough and safe. They felt weird now against his skin, like an entirely different set of hands altogether, because he’d taken off his rings to sleep and the thick steel was something so familiar to Steve, but it was still so Eddie. 

So maybe it wasn’t a secret, then, that they were together. It was an oath that they could keep each other safe as long as they kept each other undisclosed. 

With their history, safe was as much as they could ask for. 

“You know Henderson’s gonna lose his shit, though, right?” Steve couldn’t stop himself from mumbling. “When he finds out his babysitter and his DM are together.”

“He’s gonna go into cardiac arrest,” Eddie chuckled, prodding at Steve’s sides to make him laugh a little- it was unbelievable how ticklish he was. “That’s the real reason we can’t tell; we’re sparing his life.”

Steve did laugh, pulling his arm out from underneath his stomach to avoid the awful, prickly feeling that comes with it falling asleep. He rested it on the pillows, tangling his hand in Eddie’s hair.

It had been a long time since he’d felt okay in the morning. Usually, he only stayed in bed this late if he was sick or the thought of existing started to feel a little too heavy- which it had been a lot lately. It had also been a very long time since he’d stayed in bed with someone he was interested in, and he didn’t think it had ever been someone who was interested in him more than the physical aspect. Everything about it, the skin and the sweat and the sleepiness, was so golden and perfect, he never wanted it to end.

But it will. 

His entire body tensed with anxiety. Eddie felt it instantly, taking their locked hands to push Steve’s head back a little so he could look at him. 

“What was that? What’d you just think of?”

“Nothing.” Steve said quickly, softly, to hide the lie. “It’s alright. I’m fine.”

“Survey says that’s a lie.” He tapped his temple with his other hand. “You can tell me. You don’t have to, obviously, but I would like to know.”

Steve fidgeted with his hands, the one falling limp then re-tightening against Eddie’s, and the other leaving his hair to trace along his chest and the bat tattoos there. “I don’t know... I don’t have good luck with... stuff like... this...”

“Like what?”

“Like... this.” He motioned vaguely between them. 

“Oh.” Eddie paused, loosening his grip. “Would you rather I didn’t...?”

“No!” Steve pulled him back quickly. “No, no, I love it. I just don’t want it... to...”

“End.” He finished. “Yeah, I wondered if that’s what it was. It won’t, though, not the way you mean.” He lowered his voice, like this was another oath between them, another secret. But when he continued, he was completely serious, not a single trace of humor in his tone. “If this ends, and I don’t want it to, I promise, it won’t just be one of us walking out. Okay? We’ll talk about it. Mutual terms, some sort of agreement. Okay? You’re still my friend. I don’t want to lose that.”

Steve took a deep breath, swallowing up the promise like it was something sacred, a prayer. “Okay.”

Steve stirred his third cup of coffee, staring at the wall. 

He laughed cynically to himself, the sound of it echoing back at him, mocking him.

Yeah, that had gone down well, their compromise. It hadn’t gone down as civil as they pretended it would, it was more just mutual backhanded comments while both of them walked out on the other. 

His coffee tasted like shit. He didn’t know why he kept drinking it.

That was a lie. He knew exactly why he kept drinking it. 

Because it tasted like Eddie. 

It was still dark outside. 

Steve’s mouth was thick and sticky from sleep, tasting like glue as he stumbled into the kitchen after Eddie. He leaned over the counter, head propped up on his elbows and closed his eyes, trying to save some of the sleepiness he brought with him and use it to give him a little more energy. Eddie’s vest hung off his shoulders-he hadn’t bothered to put his arms through the holes, because the only point of keeping it on was to preserve the warmth of the bed and the smell of Eddie thick on him.

Eddie slid a mug across the counter to him, the smell of the coffee attacking him and forcing his eyes open again. Steve yawned, pushing himself up, coercing his body to stand up straight. He took the hot mug into his hands, even though he wanted to collapse against the floor and pass out, and compromised with keeping his hips against the counter to support him. 

Eddie leaned against him lightly, facing the opposite way so his lower back was against the counter, and he could lay his forehead on Steve’s shoulder, sipping his coffee slowly and exhaustedly. They hadn’t said anything to each other all morning, in fear of breaking the perfect, fragile silence. 

The coffee went fast, too fast, sips becoming swallows as the caffeine seeped into their brains and forced them into consciousness. Steve set his mug down and roped his arms around Eddie’s waist, kissing him lightly against the top of his head and down the side of his face, as much as he could reach. 

Eddie hummed contentedly, one hand resting on Steve’s shoulder to keep his balance and stay close. 

Monday mornings were always this rough, sometimes worse if they were hungover. Steve had to open Family Video every Monday at six, and Eddie had to be at Hawkins Auto Repair to open the garage and get the equipment working in the cold at about the same time. Their golden morning in bed long after ten was completely abandoned. 

The night hadn’t been great, either. The cold November was eerily similar to the way the Upside Down felt, and the reminder wreaked havoc on their subconscious. If one of them wasn’t shaking and thrashing from a nightmare, the other was sobbing, trying to break out of the terror of their own dreams, and sleep was virtually nonexistent.

“Morning, boys.”

Eddie lifted his head in answer to his uncle, making a noise of acknowledgement but nothing coherent. He nestled back into Steve’s warmth, trying to fall back into the sleep he’d almost found there, but even as Steve’s thumbed lightly up his back, he knew it was gone. 

Steve waved vaguely to the coffee machine to explain that they’d left some for him, but he couldn’t come up with any words either. 

Wayne seemed to understand and didn’t seem to mind, pouring the dark water into his own mug.

They didn’t bother trying to hide from Wayne anymore. If he hadn’t figured it out by now, that was on him because they certainly didn’t try to conceal it when they were in the trailer. Eddie had also told Steve weeks ago that they’d already had the incredibly awkward “Steve’s-a-very-special-friend" chat. 

Wayne was fairly indifferent to their presence, even at the beginning. Always acknowledging Steve because he was always over, sometimes asking vague questions about how they’d met and receiving equally vague answers. Now, Eddie had just become Steve-and-Eddie- as if they were one person, because they were hardly ever apart- and it just... worked.

“Gotta get dressed,” Eddie mumbled finally, but made no effort to move, if anything pulling tighter against him. 

Steve kissed the side of his face again, at the spot where his cheekbone met the corner of his eye, nuzzling his nose into his hair to breathe in the smell of sleep on him.  “Mmm...”

Eddie lifted his head, yawning, and stretched weakly against Steve’s frame, refusing to separate even though he knew they would have to eventually. His hand crept up Steve’s cheek, forcing his chin down towards him so he could meet his lips, kissing soft and slow against the thick taste of coffee and morning breath. 

“Mm, you gotta go...” Steve murmured lethargically against his mouth, finally convincing Eddie to pull away. 

He pinched affectionately at Steve’s side as he passed behind him, which made Steve squirm away from him, then tugged the vest from his shoulders-taking the warmth trapped in it with him- and disappeared in the dark of the hall to his room. 

Steve smiled softly watching him go. 

“Kid, pass me your cup.”

Steve grabbed his mug and turned around so Wayne could pour the rest of the pot in. He was glad to have more; he needed as much help as he could get to stay awake.

Both of them stood there, sipping their coffee silently in the dark. Neither forced conversation, which Steve had once interpreted as hostility but now understood that Wayne just didn’t like small talk any more than he did, and it was more comfortable for them to not say anything at all. 

They had a lot in common, really. Starting with the fact that they’d both do anything for Eddie.

Steve felt like a bad late night show host with Wayne, painfully exposed and broadcasted like everything about him was free to the public just because he knew Steve’s Big Secret, when in reality there was a lot he didn’t know. They hadn’t told him about the Upside Down. It was easier to just say nothing and let him come up with his own explanation because the truth was too hard to believe. 

He did know Steve had gone back for Eddie, had practically dragged him half-dead from the crevice, but he didn’t ask any more questions. To know someone had risked their life for his nephew was a good enough character testament that he didn’t need to know anymore. Not to mention his fond glances at Eddie and his soft affection had charmed Wayne. Eddie needed someone sweet.

Eddie came back a few minutes later in his greasy mechanic overalls, hair pulled up into a loose ponytail. “Ready to go, pretty boy?”

Steve nodded, rubbing the final traces of drowsiness from his eyes and dropping the pair of mugs in the sink. “Thanks, Wayne.”

“See you later, boys.”

Steve’s clothes were in the backseat of the Beemer, his stupid green and blue and orange Family Video uniform, and Eddie offered to drive so he could change, but Steve quickly brushed it off and said he’d change when he got there. 

“Okay, let me try that again,” Eddie revised, taking the keys from his hand. “I want a strip tease. Get to it, sweetheart.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I’m not doing that.”

“Oh, why not?”

Steve shrugged, plucking the keys back and sliding into the driver’s seat to avoid any more switching.  

Eddie frowned, eyebrows knit together, as he slowly climbed into the other side. Usually, Steve jumped at an opportunity for Eddie to look at him, to call him pretty. Eddie had been making up situations just so the opportunity could arise. 

“Are you okay?”

Another shrug.

“Okay...”

Steve wouldn’t look at him, even though he could feel Eddie staring at him, trying to read him. He wouldn’t have guessed what Steve was thinking anyway.

He'd been thinking about it a lot lately, always noticing it. It had been a long time since he’d spent a couple weeks fighting for his life and he wasn’t always at sports like he had been in high school, and he wasn’t a teenager anymore, which all made sense and seemed logical, so it didn’t really bother him at first.

It wasn’t until his mother had come home a few weeks ago, and noticed, and had the nerve to say something about it, that it really made him uncomfortable.

“You’ve got love-handles, Steve.”

He knew Eddie didn’t care. He probably hadn’t even noticed; for once, someone cared about Steve as more than just a body and he probably didn’t even think about it. It was a stupid thing to be insecure about, anyway. He just... if his mother had noticed it, who else would?

And he wanted to tell Eddie, so Eddie could laugh at him incredulously and tell him it was ridiculous, and he was so pretty and perfect, and not a single person would notice, but he was afraid that if he drew attention to it, then Eddie would see it and he would think about it, and he’d have to lie that it didn’t bother him, when it probably would start to. 

“I think you’re self-effacing,” Eddie said, startling him out of his thoughts. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m pretty sure you’re tearing yourself apart and I want you to stop.”

“I’m not...” Steve muttered. He trailed off so he didn’t have to lie. “I’m not doing anything. I just...” He took a deep breath and flashed a forced smile. “Don’t deserve you.”

“So, you are self-effacing.” 

“No! That’s not what I meant.” Steve shook his head, laughing, trying to play it off as a joke. “Forget about it. I’m fine.”

Steve lit a cigarette. He’d been on a steady diet of coffee and cigarettes the past few weeks, interspersed with whatever shit take-out he and Robin got after work. The benefit of it was that he was always so malnourished, he was always just mostly numb and exhausted, and he was losing even more weight than he had trying to make the lightweight wrestling team in high school. Sure, the constant migraines were a pain in the ass, but between the dull throbbing and blurred vision and inability to breathe, Steve was sure he was close to dying. It wasn’t necessarily that he wanted to, or that he was trying to even, but the thought of buying food and then making food and then eating food was too many steps and too much effort to stay alive, especially when he couldn’t think of a single person that cared if he was dead. 

And he was skinny again, which he hadn’t been for a while there, not as much as he’d like to have been, even if Eddie had never noticed or at least had the decency to never say anything, and skinny was pretty, and pretty was all Steve knew how to do. 

The cigarette tasted awful. He drank more coffee to try and wash the taste from his mouth, but the nicotine was starting to make his entire body go numb and that was always nice, so maybe the bitterness of it was his own.

It was all fine and dandy to think about how perfect Eddie had been the first few months, but they had peaked not so long after that morning and things had fallen apart fast. 

Maybe the love handles were the reason he’d... Steve didn’t even want to think about it, didn’t want to even want to think the words and make them real. 

Steve threw himself down on the couch, lighting another cigarette. He flipped on the tv, just to have some sound, something to break up the silence, and forced himself to remember. 

Everything, even if it made him want to die. He had to now if he was ever going to get out of this cycle of feeling sorry for himself. 

@maya-custodios-dionach and @steve-the-hairrington

*if you wanna be added to the tag list message me! the whole thing is written and i’ll add a chapter every day*

[totaldramamovies]

Total Drama Movies- Episode 4- A Winner for Two

*Early morning, guys’ side of 4th Thing’s cabin*

Eddy: *Mumbling in his sleep* Sigita!..

Rajiv: God dude, you’re obsessed. Go touch some grass!

Kenny: Yeah man! I got some if you want!

Wyatt: Plus, she’s going out with me. Like, boi. 😂🫱🫱 *T-pose*

Eddy: I know you’re a joke character, but you’ve stolen Sigita from me! She was supposed to me mine 🥺🤓🤓🤓🥺

Rajiv: Sigita’s just a human like us. She can’t steal her, bro.

Wyatt: *360 no-scope* Yeah!

Kenny: (To Rajiv) Man, I don’t know HOW he pulls HER.

*Girls side of cabin*

Sigita: Yeah, I know! He was so surprised!

Dominique: Really?

Sigita: Oh, for sure! I mean, it’s not gonna be very big, just a little date, but Wyatt went crazy!

Dominique: So you’re going on a date tonight with Wyatt? I know I’m usually not judgy but… HIM? Really?

Sigita: What! He’s athletic! And strategic! And everything right in my dream man😍

Dominique: I’m not so sure… Kenny has been all up in my business. I think he wants me like Eddy wants you.

Sigita: Oh, please! Eddy? That nerdy band kid? I’d rather get with that sigma Fredrick…

Dominique: Oh, I don’t know… he has his charms! You like artistic guys right? He plays trombone!

Sigita: Yeah but… Ugh. Half the time he speaks theres the nerd emoji following it, and he’s always really awkward too…

Dominique: He just doesn’t get out much. I bet you two would get right along!

Sigita: Nah, I’m sticking with my date with Wyatt tonight.

*Ferocious Monsters’ Cabin*

Jamil: Maxim brother! How does it feel knowing we have no Bailey!

Maxim: Great, the cabins are so much calmer now! What are you doing?

Jamil: Well, I have a bit of a crush for Ines. She’s a powerful adversary yet also a caring teammate. I’m thinking I’ll ask her sometime soon. And a-

*Chris blows his airhorn*

Chris: CHALLENGERS, GET YOUR BUTTS OUT HERE!

Fangxiu: Giving newgen…😒😒😒😒

Andres: What noww..

Chris: Its your next challenge!! This episode: Romance Movies!!

Cece: Ugh, we’re gonna be DATING eachother?!

Chris: Nope, don’t worry! However there’s romantic tension on 3 of the teams, so I want each team to make a romantic scene for dinner for two! Whichever team does the worst loses.

Dennis: You said that only 3 teams had romance. What about the fourth?

Chris: That team is YOU, Mighty Wizards! So instead you guys can uh… walk through a haunted house for Halloween. Why not?

Dennis: *Sighs* I guess I will never find love…

*FEROCIOUS MONSTERS*

Eliza: Romantic Tension? Really? On our team?

Ines: It looks so. I wonder who…

Eliza: Who do you think is the cutest?? 🥰

Ines: Hmm… I guess I’d go with Jamil. He’s a great competitor. I never really think about romance and all that stuff though..

Grace: Oh my god😜😜 JAMIL!! INES-

Ines: GRACE! SHUT UP!

Jamil: Ye what is it?

Ines: I wanted to tell you that we should work together on building a table while the others go get candles and stuff..

Jamil: Sure! I think thats smart considering we are the 2 strongest.

Maxim: (to Jamil) Now’s you’re chance!

*MIGHTY WIZARDS*

Tamia: Ugh, this haunted house is easy. Who would even be afraid of this crap?

Pietro: B-bro.. I’m soo s-s-scareddd!!

Roman: I know right d-d-dude!!

Pauline: Of what, that fake web, or the warewolf that’s clearly Chris in disguise?

Chris: I’m not Chris.. Im.. rawr…

Boris: Dwaeji was eliminated in episode one. Nobody should be pretending to be furries now.

*4TH THING*

Eddy: You think this contest is for me to win over Sigita?

Kenny: No, dude, it’s probably for Wyatt. They got a date tonight.

Sigita: Oh, Wyatt, let’s make this date setup perfect!

Wyatt: You got it babez.. 🤣😂😂🤣😂

Rajiv: I’ll get roses!

*4th Thing makes a beautiful table and chairs overlooking the studio on a balcony, perfectly lined up with the sunset.*

Chris: And… 4th Thing is SAFE!

*FEARLESS WARRIORS*

Cece: Ugh, please… This challenge is making me nauseous. Lovebirds, fess up and don’t you dare end up like season 2 Geoff and Bridgette! 

Leopold: It’s me and Francesca! We were going to have a date last night but we moved it to tonight after I hurt my leg. Anyway, let’s get this date up and running!

Fredrick: We knew it was you and someone. I don’t have time for any women. But don’t call me “asexual” since I’m not part of any alphabet mafia. 🍷🍷🗿🗿🗿

Taniyah: Girl, we knew about this since last episode. Plus nobody would wanna get with you 🤭

Charlotte: Francesca, let’s make your date ethereal!

Cece: (to Self) I’ve seen these couples before. If I wanna win, I just gotta get one of them off, the other one will just be weak until they get eliminated. Easy peasy! I have a plan, but sadly it involves Fredrick.

Francesca: Oh, Leo, this date will be perfect!

*Fast forward a few hours, Mighty Wizards have completed the haunted house, its between Ferocious Monsters and Fearless Warriors*

*FEROCIOUS MONSTERS*

Eliza: Well, one of us should confess if we want to actually make use of this place.

Jamil: I should confess… Ines! You’ve been a wonderful companion, may you want to go on the date with me?

Ines: Oh! Uh… sure!

Eliza: (To Ines) That didn’t sound too confident…

Ines: (Back to Eliza) Well for all we know, he could just like me platonically! Plus, he could grow on me…

Jamil: Let’s finish this! Let’s not be last! Again…

Ferocious Monsters: YEAH!

*FEARLESS WARRIORS*

*The team has built a dark wooden table, 2 chairs, and have prepared a wooden wall painted red. The table is lit with a candle*

Taniyah: This table gonna be amazing!

Cece: (To self) This should be easy.

*She “accidentally” trips into thin wall, making it crash onto the table, and it sets on fire*

Fredrick: Oh no!! Our table!! 🤣🤣🤣😂😂 It’s broken!! 🍷🍷🗿🗿

Francesca: It’s okay, Leo. We can still bring some of the set chairs by the river and dine on the pier!

Leopold: Sounds great! As long as your there!

Chris: FEARLESS WARRIORS LOSE! See you at the ceremony tonight!

Eliza: We should still finish this up. Let’s give Jamil & Ines a great date!

(A few hours later, the 2 tables are ready for Wyatt & Sigita, and Jamil & Ines)

Jamil: This is nice.

Ines: Yeah!

(Francesca goes by the dock and sets up the chairs)

Francesca: Alright, Leo had no injuries, so there should be no problem!

(As like last time, time passes by, and Leopold is nowhere to be seen)

Francesca: Ugh, what now? Does he not want to see me? Is he shy? *Francesca walks back to the cabin*

*Francesca walks up to the boys’ side, and hears talking between Leo and Fredrick*

Francesca: I don’t wanna eavesdrop but…

*Francesca listens closely*

Leopold: Yeah man, I’m glad I dodged a bullet Francesca, what an idiot woman!

*The two laugh*

Francesca: *gasps loudly* WHAT?! 

(The two hear her and open the door)

Frederick: Look, it’s that stupid woman🍷🍷🗿🗿

Francesca: LEOPOLD! HOW COULD YOU?! 

*Flash to her, Charlotte, and Taniyah*

Charlotte: Oh my! He just insulted like that?

Taniyah: We should vote him out tonight. Who’s with me?

The three: I!

(Elimination Ceremony. The seven up for elimination are:

Cece, the Popular Girl,

Charlotte, the Stoicist,

Fangxiu, the Flop Icon,

Francesca, the Normal Girl,

Fredrick, the Sigma,

Leopold, the Track Runner and

Taniyah, the Baddie)

Chris: Okay, the seven of you have casted your votes! If I call your name, you will be safe, and you will get a “Golden Chris Award”!

FANGXIU!

Fangxiu: SLAY 😍😍😍

CECE!

Cece: Yes!

TANIYAH!

Taniyah: Yay!

CHARLOTTE!

Charlotte: Phew!

FREDRICK!

Fredrick: Skibidi Rizz Ohio 🍷🗿🗿

Chris: The last two unsafe: the supposed lovebirds now conflicted. The last one safe is…

Fangxiu: WAITTT 😘😘😱😱!! *Jiafei Scream* ITS NOT THEIR DOING! ITS CECE’S!!

Francesca, Leopold & Cece: What?!

Fangxiu: I’LL TELL U 🥰

*Flashback to a bit before the date*

*Cece knocks on boys’ cabin door*

Fredrick: What do you want? 🍷🗿

Cece: Hey… What’s Leopold doing, he looks busy?

Fredrick: He’s getting ready for some date. Why? 🗿

Cece: A date!? But isn’t your entire “sigma” thing about ignoring and belittling women?

Fredrick: Oh. True.. Well… Uh..- 🍷🗿🗿 You know what? I will teach him the true side of women! He seems gullible enough!

Cece: That’s good! Thanks for hating on my gender! Anyway, the reason why I was here is because Francesca was about to set up Leopold. She wasn’t really going to go! Her kindness is a façade!

Fredrick: Really? Lemme tell em. HEY LEO!

Leopold: Yeah?

Fredrick: Francesca was setting you up! She’s not really kind! Cece heard her bragging with her friends that you were being set up! Why don’t the three vote Francesca tonight?

Leopold: Wait… what..? Really?! Ugh.. You know what? I WILL vote her tonight! 

Cece: Great! See you then! *Leaves*

Fredrick: Now you know the true side of women. Men are superior 🍷🗿

Leopold: Yeah man, I’m glad I dodged a bullet Francesca, what an idiot woman!

*The two laugh*

Cece: Oh, it’s easy to manipulate them like that. Bye bye, Leo & Franny!

Fangxiu: *Spying from distance* GASP!! 😰 CECE IS TRICKING THEM? NOT CECE IN HER GASLIGHTING ERA 😍

*Back to present*

Fangxiu: SO TO ANSWER THIS MESS… LEOPOLD ISN’T THE WRONG ONE, AND FRANCESCA ISN’T THE WRONG ONE! ITS… CECE!

Chris: Okay, cute, but I don’t care! Leo got four votes from Cece, Charlotte, Francesca, and Taniyah. Seeya Leo!

Francesca: WAIT!! I’m sorry Leo, I didn’t know the full story.. I can’t believe I got you eliminated!! I’m so sorry… I hope you can forgive me.

Leopold: It’s okay, maybe we can go on a date after the contest?

Francesca: You know it! Just don’t be so gullible next time!

*The two chuckle before…

Will Smith Robot: KEEEEEP. MY WIIIIFE’S. NAAAME. OUUUTCHA. FREEEAKING. MOUUTH!!!

Leopold: *goes flying* AAAAAAILOVEYOU!AHHHHHH!!!

Taniyah: Sorry we got him out girl..

Francesca: It’s okay, you didn’t know any better. Maybe next time I should handle my anger better. And you, Cece! Why did you do that?!

Cece: Cuz this is a game of survival, only the strongest get to move on. If you’re dependent you’ll eventually fall!

Charlotte: Good lord, dear. You know it’s bad when it sounds like something Fredrick would say.

Fredrick: I mean… She’s true.. 🍷🗿

Francesca: And Fangxiu… thank you for giving us this info, even though its too late. 

Fangxiu: SORRY 😔😔😔 I WAS TO BUSY USING MY ROSE TOY-

Chris: And that’s it for the most dramatic episode of Total Drama Movies yet! If you want even more drama, stay tuned because next episode…

*Drumroll*

THE VIEWERS ARE VOTING!!

*Everyone gasps*

Chris: Don’t miss it, it’s this Sunday! Right here, on TOTAL! DRAMA! MOVIES!

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So, 4th episode down! I wanted to have viewer voting on the first episode, but I wanted to set a lot of the characters up before anything. Anyway, stay tuned for tomorrow's episode, Episode 5! Due to viewer voting however, this series will now become weekly. Make sure to like, follow, comment, and show support for the series if you want to see more! See you tomorrow!