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livwritesstuff · 5 days

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time for that age old question: is love enough to beat back the apocalypse?

Because Steve's right there to protect everybody like the self-sacrificing asshole he is help Eddie make the music he's not strong enough for yet help them all put Vecna in the ground for good this time, right?(!??!)

or: what's the song for your walkman, baby? does it even matter?

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

Or: Five Times Eddie Has To Ask For Help, Plus One Time He Doesn’t Need It Anymore (but asks anyway) ✨ for @penny00dreadful 💜

<<< three: sleep 🌗

🎧 🎹 four: play 🎶 🛡️

To tell the whole truth of it: it comes too quickly—Vecna’s last stand. Of course it does.

But probably, if he’s being fair: they’d never have been really ready. Not for this, and so maybe it’s best that they’re not fully healed, not at full strength when it all comes to a head, not least because that means Vecna and his petal-toothed brigade aren’t at full strength either. And that choice, for their side, is sloppy; the Party stands on the right-side-up against the attack because they have to. Vecna makes his move because—or else, Eddie’s fairly sure—because the sadistic ballsac is losing his fucking mind.

Which is terrifying, sure, but fuck if it doesn’t help their cause.

It’s actually over pretty quick, even compared to Spring Break which, while it felt like a lifetime for how much it changed Eddie’s own, it’s only been those handful of days—but it’s kinda like the grand finale at a fireworks show: everything all at once then, done. In the everything’s though: he might not like it, but Eddie’s not so foolish as to believe he’s not still too tender, still too deep in healing the finer points of being gnawed alive to be anything but a burden in the thick of it. He refuses to be sidelined, though, and he thinks it says a lot for the long-term health of this glorious impossible thing he’s…building? Yeah, he, umm, he, Eddie Munson, is building a real goddamn thing where he doesn’t even just let someone into his heart and treasures them there, no, he’s building a thing where he gives his heart and gets on new and soft and trembling in kind and they both get to work at the treasuring of something more precious than just their own vulnerable insides, but yeah, yeah:

Eddie thinks it bodes really fucking well for the hopes he has that lean hard toward forever, already, in Eddie’s chest at least when Steve looks his way as they’re planning the teams and he locks eyes with Eddie and Eddie doesn’t even get his mouth open to breathe, to plead don’t cut me out, don’t send me to Wayne to be ‘safe’ or ‘out of harm’s way’ or whatever, don’t leave me so fucking far from you my heart hurts just because it’s beating in the middle space unmoored and shaking around all bruised up with it for not knowing and I know I can’t do what everyone else can but it’ll be bad enough not being next to you please don’t push me far enough that I won’t know the moment you’re safe, just—

Steve meets his eyes, and Eddie’s breath catches before his heart trips, and then Steve speaks up—and he doesn’t, not all that often when the nerdiest among them are shoring up the battle plans—but he watches Eddie without blinking when he pipes up:

“Eddie’s on medical and audio, with Erica and Jon.”

And maybe it’s his tone—this almost wholly novel thing in Steve that’s steely and unquestionable but no one pushes, they nod and get back to work, totally seamless and, and…yeah. That’s all Eddie wanted. Best he could hope for. Just outside the gate they go through. Close enough to hold a hand on the way down, and reach for purchase on the journey back.

Steve swallows hard, and nods at Eddie before he looks away and starts gearing up, twirls his fucking nailbat so it catches the sunlight even thought the metal’s mostly rusted, now and just…Eddie hadn’t needed to say a word. And Steve wanted to send him to safety, the way his throat had bobbed made it real clear there was something heavy he’s held back but: he’d said what he said. He’d laid the line in Eddie’s favor. Eddie wants to hold him, wants to pull him close and feel him breathe, and—

Yeah. Eddie kinda feels like the way it goes is a really good sign for their future as a couple. A couple. Them. Together.

With an always on the other side of all of this that could be kinda fucking magnificent, maybe. Given the chance.

Point being: Eddie gets himself set up with at least a full ambulance’s supplies for first aid, definitely not acquired legally, and a stereo set up he really wishes someone had been kind enough to outfit him with in not-the-apocalypse, holy shit is it gorgeous, but since the strength in his hands is still a work-in-progress, he’s gotta be ready to crank up the noise as a distraction from arm’s-length. It’s actually driving him fucking crazy—or, was; it was, pre-active return to the regularly scheduled world ending—the whole not being able to make music, to translate the noise in his head into sounds on the strings but even that, even that’s been tolerable, survivable because of Steve—who he loves, he gets to love Steve Harrington holy fuck—but Steve’s not just there to be everything and more than the air Eddie goddamn breathes, to become the music just by existing, nope, he one ups that shit: he asked Eddie if it’d be enough to learn the chords he needs. So Eddie could match the words with the notes right, so Steve could be a—

“—kinda piss-poor substitute but,” Steve had shrugged for it with a crooked grin; “but even a bad translator gets a message across, and you’d know when it’s wrong so we can figure out how to fix it and—“

And Eddie’d grabbed Steve’s chin and yanked his mouth close to fucking consume that man like a soul goddamn starved.

“I’d be a shit teacher,” Eddie had mouthed against Steve’s lips after they were sucked well-swollen; “if I still can’t lift the fucking neck for more than a minute,” but Steve had heard none of it, just shot right back:

“You don’t think we’ve beat steeper odds than that?”

And in the face of that raised brow, those red lips parted, that pulse in that neck still a little bit visible like a tease: the fuck was Eddie supposed to do but dive back in and love on the man who’d somehow agreed to be his, and to claim Eddie of all people in turn?

Which is a whole other reason why everything’s gonna be fine: Steve’s gonna make music with him. Steve’s gonna be Eddie’s muse and the vessel for what he inspires. It’s gonna be like Greek fucking poetry, except it’s gonna be them.

So Eddie’s all stocked up, s’got everyone’s floaty-bone-breaky songs queued up on blast for immediate deployment as necessary, and Steve’s the last to go through—he always is, in Eddie’s experience, waits for everyone to be safely accounted for before he spares a thought for himself and it might kill Eddie one day but not fucking today, because it’s gonna be fine—

“Eddie.”

It feels a little like history repeating itself, the way Steve huddles him in a little. Henderson’s through, with Lucas and Hopper and the weird stray Russian, but it’s not like history repeating, because Eddie’s got different words to see him off with; so fucking different.

“Last time I didn’t have,” and Steve reaches, cups Eddie’s cheek, drags down to press on his chest as his voice strains hard: “and it almost killed me,” and Steve usually pinches between his eyes to keep his feelings in check but instead of using his free hand to hold back the tears he reaches for Eddie’s and laces their fingers as his voice cracks and he chokes out:

“Please,” and it’s for everything. For all the almosts from last time; for all the possibilities rife this time. For all the hopes Eddie thinks they share beyond how this shakes out.

“Exceptionally underqualified field med,” Eddie breathes, and squeezes Steve’s hand so, so hard like a promise, because it is; “exceptionally overqualified DJ,” and Steve chuckles, wet but real and it’s enough, because:

“I got it, Stevie,” Eddie bends his forehead to Steve’s to say better than with words that he’s not in this to be a hero, he’ll be right here the whole time, but that doesn’t mean he…that doesn’t mean he can help but to ask this time:

“Just,” and the breath in him punches out unexpectedly as he damn-near begs:

“Only bring me back the little things, yeah? That I know how to fix?”

And they both hear what’s said underneath it:

Don’t turn around and die down there, and kill me in kind..

And—if anyone’s keeping track—they turn out not to need it but: the way the kiss is a wholeass wartime farewell, man.

And then: Eddie waits, and fucks with the speakers for less than an hour before the earth shakes, and his heart drops, but then he hears it.

The fucking whooping of those shitheads echoing through the cracks.

And then he sees it, runs, grabs the first hand that’s clinging to the rope this time and pulls with strength he doesn’t have, is probably more a hindrance than a help but he steadies them each back on the ground and hugs them so tight, kisses more than one of them on the head or the cheek as he doesn’t pretend not to be sobbing through the laughter because they did it, they fucking did it, somehow it’s over and he loves these people and he’s so fucking happy they’re alive and safe and here and—

And the person he loves more, loves most, brings up the rear, a little bloodied, a little scratched up, dingy with the fucking air down there but smiling and Eddie…

Eddie falls into him so fucking hard they both hit the ground and just, just grab onto one another. Just hold and breathe and catch lips every few seconds like an afterthought because they feel each other’s heartbeat where their chests are pressed tight and it’s, they’re…

Steve’s got four broken fingers across both hands. None in a row. He’s basically giving a Vulcan salute by default for how they’re taped.

Eddie loves him so goddamn much it hurts.

And Eddie’d obviously known—once things start to settle in the days that’ve followed—that teaching Steve guitar with those Spock-y hands was on the back burner, but he does ask Steve to sit, and to rest, and to help hum back the tunes in Eddie’s head while Eddie jots lyrics with a hand that’s still shaky but steadying out more every day, and it’s kind of perfect, and Steve adds some things into the melodies either on purpose or by accident but they’re better for it every time and—

Muse and vessel, man. The light of Eddie’s whole goddamn life.

With fucking Vulcan hands still, though, so: excuse Eddie for being…bewildered when his boyfriend—boyfriend, that’s his boyfriend—but his taped-up-healing-Vulcan-handed boyfriend is propping the front door open and lugging in a long, not-recovery-friendly thing that looks close to dropping on his toes and—

“The fuck are you doing?” Eddie asks with a little more panic in his voice than he’d hoped for as he rushes as best he can to where Steve’s kicking the door shut behind him, fluttering his hands around uselessly as Steve maneuvers past him, leans across for a peck at the corner of Eddie’s mouth and calls—“It’s fine, it weighs, like, nothing”—over his shoulder as he settles the, the thing down on the coffee table in the living room they’ve started actually using for, y’know.

Living.

Eddie follows him in, though, because of course, he’s half-a-dog on that man’s heels, whole-caught-in-the-gravity-of-his-everything: but Eddie follows as Steve tosses himself backward with something in his hand, rolls and rucks up his fucking absurd Hawking Middle tee across the sweet curve of his hips, the way the soft give of skin tempts Eddie to run his tongue over the trail of almost-curls, like baby-curls where they lead under the waist of his jeans: Eddie would happily volunteer to survive on the taste of that musky-delicate space until the end of goddamn time—

But then Steve’s huffing a breathless ha from behind a chair where he’d been stretched to reach and a light catches Eddie’s eye from his periphery where he’d been staring unblinking just at Steve: the big long black thing on the coffee table. It takes a genuine concerted effort not to keep at the Steve-staring—not an uncommon state of Eddie’s existence, in all fairness—and check what’s glowing on the table: something turned on. Was plugged in, right, that’s what had Steve rolling on the floor without Eddie on top of or being deliciously pinned down by him.

The something being the big long black thing that Eddie takes in for the whole of it, now: a keyboard.

“Jon picked it up for me second-hand from the place next to Fox Photo when he drove down for his camera, and Rob vouched that it’s a good brand and like, really good condition,” Steve’s raised up on his knees, now with his hands braces on his thighs as Eddie studies the keys, fingers the ends of a every few of the naturals.

“Rob helped with those, too, so I’d know the right, like, chords,” and yeah: they’re stupa of masking tape stuck to the keys with letters in blue, black, and red pen, alternating so they don’t get mixed up, some with and arrow, Eddie assumes, to indicate a sharp.

“I only remember like half of one song from when my parents thought it would look good to have me take piano lessons,” Steve huffs in whole-ass judgment; “my mom wanted the endorsement of the guy who was stepping down from city council, and his wife taught private lessons, so, y’know,” Steve rolls his eyes; “super convenient leading up to the election.”

“What song?”

Steve blinks, tips his head in askance for what Eddie recognizes very clearly as something closer to a croak than a question, his throat all tight. He tries to cough, to clear it.

“What song do you remember?”

Steve snorts at that, leans back on his palms, and fuck is he beautiful.

“Clair de Lune,” Steve grins crooked; “the one song I was allowed to pick, instead of just being assigned.”

“Why’d you pick it?” Not that Eddie doesn’t like it or anything. It’s more that…he knew Steve could more than just drum fingers on keys, if only just, and that a baby grand used to sit in the corner where there’s a stereo cabinet now, but.

But: see, there’s like a whole half of his heart that’s dedicated to collecting new knowledge about everything Steve: his favorite food when he was 12 versus the now. How his favorite color became his favorite color. The story behind all the polos. The nitty-gritties about why he’s in a big-ass house alone for approximately 360 days a year, and how long it’s been that way. Eddie’s whole heart is basically Steve’s but every day that half overflows a little, and Eddie’s only keeping it relegated to parts filled with Steve-lore so he can feel the collection break containment every other day, this grand and joyous bursting under his ribs as everything spills over again, and again, and again until it’s all just Steve, and his heart has to burst or stretch, or both.

Eddie thinks both will be amazing.

And right now, in the interest of building toward that amazing-both: he wants to know why Debussy.

Steve chuckles to himself—better music than any dead French guy by a country mile—and eyes Eddie almost slyly.

“Do you remember Claire Reynolds?”

Vaguely. Like, very vaguely. He remembers…uneven pigtails. Very actual-cult-like vibes about her family as a vague impression and now that he’s bringing it to mind he feels a new wave of indignation: those Children-of-the-Corn motherfuckers were just fine but Eddie liked a board game and he was probably a murderer.

“When we were in like, first grade,” Steve’s continuing on; “she asked me every, single, day, to come over and see her sheep.” Steve looks up at Eddie and bites his lower lip, lets his gaze dance and lets Eddie fall into it for a few dazed seconds before he spells it out.

“She had these crazy eyes about it, it was kinda unsettling,” Steve nudges, but Eddie’s doesn’t get it until:

“And it’s not like I do now, because obviously I don’t, but I definitely didn’t speak a lick of French when I was eight.”

It takes Eddie a hot second before he snorts hard enough to hurt:

Claire, da Loon.

“I was eight,” Steve protests Eddie’s laughter halfheartedly even as he joins in, reaches to slap at Eddie’s upper arm which honestly: just makes him laugh harder.

“Anyway,” Steve fights through the last of the chuckling as it peters out between them, drags himself to sitting next to the coffee table and taps his hand to the top of the keyboard.

“I know it’s not the same as learning guitar to help, and I can probably only get the top and bottom notes with these,” he lifts his Vulcan-fingers his a shrug; “but I was hoping that’d be better than nothing?”

And, like, how Eddie was talking about his heart having to swell, for all the things he gets to tuck inside of it that come with loving Steve Harrington?

He might crack a rib, just now, because—

“This is for me?”

Steve purses his lips, lifts a brow:

“Well, technically it’s for me,” steve singles his fingers, which looks absurd with the splints; “but yeah. To help you get the songs out. I mean, once these are free again, you can help me with the guitar like we talked about, until you’re—“

And Eddie cannot be blamed, see: he cannot be fucking blamed for tackling Steve to the floor and kissing him hard enough to bruise because…

“You got hurt,” Eddie half-breathes between kisses; “you got hurt and I was so afraid I was gonna lose you,” and Eddie reaches for those taped fingers and kisses them, too: so gentle and Steve’s expression softens so quick:

“I was scared, too,” he whispers between them, cups Eddie’s face with his unloaded hand; “you were as safe as I could make you within the fucking city limits but I was still so goddamn scared.”

Cue more rib-cracking for the heart-swelling, because Jesus fucking Christ.

“And you,” Eddie exhales, slow and shaky; “you’re hurt, but you went and got,” he nods to the keyboard;

“I know it’s not ideal,” Steve’s quick to, to what, apologize? For being insane and perfect and—

“Shut up,” Eddie says, voice low and watery and he’s still kissing at Steve’s fingers, holding his wrist delicate but also like a lifeline.

“You’re hurt,” Eddie maybe kinda moans it because he hates it, as much as he’s so fucking grateful that’s it’s just this, no worse than this; “and you still—”

“I promised, didn’t I?”

And that…that’s one thing Eddie’s learned beyond reproach; that even to his detriment, Steve keeps his goddamn promises.

And he’d promised to help Eddie get his words out, to place the lyrics to the notes and help unclutter his brain so he didn’t lose his mind.

Holy fucking hell.

“Steve,” Eddie starts, shakes his head, needs to find the right words. “You’re alive,” the most important thing. “You are healing,” another most important thing, for Eddie to oversee and make sure of, even as Steve keeps an eye on the last lingering threads of the long haul on Eddie’s road to recovery in kind, his beloved mother hen.

“This is,” and he runs his fingers too light to draw sounds across the keys, hopes he sounds as awed and grateful as he feels; “but you, you’ve gotta test, you have to,” and Eddie shakes his head and lifts his eyes to just fucking ask it:

“Why?”

And Steve: Steve just studies his face for a few seconds, reads what he needs before he smiles kinda exasperated, mostly fond and answers so simply, while also breaking a few more of Eddie’s ribs when he just says:

“Because I love you.”

And Eddie’s heart’s not so overfull yet of all of Steve, it’s not fair that it just bursts right then and there, Eddie propelled into Steve’s arms to kiss him deep this time, like he’s searching out Steve’s soul to taste and maybe he is, save that he needs his heart to not have exploded for feeling if he’s going to keep the memory of it safe in his chest for always, he needs to patch his heart back up first but he’s too distracted, too drowned in the way love actually fucking feels, fucking shifts his cells around and makes a new version of him, lets his heart grow bigger except it went and blasted apart with the unprecedented immensity of loving and—

And then Eddie’s got Steve’s taped up hands on both his cheeks, and he remembers that night, in the shower, where Steve ripped the seams from his shirt so taking it off wouldn’t hurt him; notices how Steve is wearing that same fucking shirt in this very moment, all in one piece, like it never split apart in the first place.

Master seamstress, tried and tested and true; truer than anything.

So Eddie just dives back in and kisses with everything in him, thinks maybe when Steve tastes the pieces of Eddie’s blowout heart under his tongue while Eddie goes diving for the sweet lick of Steve’s soul:

Eddie thinks Steve’s mouth might know how to stitch up torn things, too. Especially the kinds that are ripped at their seams wholly for the sake of loving that fucking hard.

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

divider credits here & here

👾 title credit here

💫 ao3 link here

#oh my god oh my god #eating this whole series for dinner atm

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livwritesstuff · 5 days

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Steve comes home from a few hours of running errands with his and Eddie’s one-year-old daughter Moe to find Eddie pitching an absolute fit to his beleaguered book agent Paul over the phone.

Given how Eddie’s third book is about three months away from its release date, Steve has a pretty decent idea what the fit might be over.

The dreaded book tour.

Look – Steve doesn’t like it either. He didn’t like it back in ‘95 when Eddie’s first book came out. He didn’t like it in ‘99 with the second one either. He definitely won’t like it this time around, especially now with Moe in the picture. He actually likes having his partner around, believe it or not (and, if he’s honest, there’s still some baggage surrounding work-related travel and his parents’ relationship that he’s still trying to shake).

Still, he knows it’s a necessary evil of Eddie’s success and they’ll all survive it.

That’s Steve’s perspective anyways, even if Eddie doesn’t share it with him.

Eddie looks over as Steve drops a few bags of groceries onto the kitchen counter.

“Hang on, Paul – Steve just got back from absconding with my daughter,” Eddie says, and then he pulls the phone away from his ear, “Don’t put her down for a nap yet.”

Steve only shakes his head.

“Sorry, Paul,” he says, not raising his voice quite enough for Paul to actually hear him (Eddie hears him though, and that’s what matters) as he continues on his way up the stairs to get Moe ready for her nap (he’ll drag out the process as long as he can for Eddie’s sake – he’s not a total monster).

In the end, Eddie’s phone call ends no more than five minutes later.

“So what’s the damage?” Steve asks when Eddie makes his way into Moe’s room.

“Five weeks,” Eddie grumbles as he pulls Moe out of Steve’s arms. He presses a kiss to her chubby cheek and then adds, “Stops goddamn nation-wide.”

“Maybe stop writing so good and you wouldn’t have this issue,” Steve points out.

“Shut up – I’m not gonna do it. Paul can drop me, see if I care.”

“You’d care.”

Eddie’s shoulders slump.

“Yeah, I’d care,” he mutters, and then he shakes his head, “It’s entirely unfair that he’d expect me to leave home for over a month when he knows I have a little baby at home. I’m not doing it. She’ll be a whole teenager when I come back, Stevie.”

Steve looks at him, “It’s five weeks, love. She’ll probably still be the same shoe size.”

“I’ll miss our anniversary.”

“No, you won’t. It’s not ‘til the month after.”

“Okay, who’s side are you on here?”

“Paul’s, obviously.”

Eddie’s jaw drops as he feigns an affronted expression.

“I cannot believe that my beloved, my betrothed–”

“Betrothed?”

“–would side with my traitorous agent over–”

“Ed, Paul was pretty forgiving when you slowed down writing for six months for the foster training stuff,” Steve points out (and it’s a point that actually manages to stop Eddie’s tirade – an impressive feat, he’s well aware), “And then he was really forgiving when you stopped completely for almost a year when Moe was born. Wasn’t this book supposed to come out, like, over a year ago? I feel like the least you can do is put up with a book tour given everything you’ve put him through.”

Eddie only blinks at him a moment – clearly trying to fathom any kind of counter-argument and coming up empty.

“Damn you,” he mutters.

“Can’t believe you used to be the guy who wanted to be a rockstar and go on year-long world tours,” Steve laughs, “Now you can’t even handle a month of the continental United States.”

“Watch your mouth, Harrington. Hey – maybe you and Moe can come and be the world’s cutest groupies.”

“We’ll see.”

#little do they know robbie’s gonna show up 10 months later and delay the next book by another four years lol #liv’s steddie dads verse #steddie #steddie dads #steve harrington #eddie munson

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livwritesstuff · 6 days

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✨Babygirl ✨

#the pout KILLS me

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livwritesstuff · 6 days

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a snippet of the hadestown au i'll never be confident enough to fully write

“Robin,” Eddie begged (probably a bit too desperately given the circumstances), “Robin-Robin-Robin, you’ve betrayed me.”

Robin sighed as she turned to face him.

“How have I betrayed you, Eddie?” she asked, “Honestly.”

Eddie didn’t respond, just gestured wordlessly at the man currently sitting in a booth on the other side of the bar that Robin had just led him into.

The most gorgeous (handsome, beautiful, sexy, attractive, hot, whatever) man Eddie had ever laid his humble eyes upon.

“I’ve told you loads about him, Eddie,” Robin replied, wrapping a hand around her wrist and trying to tug him away from the door.

“Yeah. You’ve told me all about how nice and funny and sweet he is, and how he’s a kindergarten teacher and how he puts most of his paycheck right back into his classroom and how he volunteers at that learning center downtown and he likes to cook and he gardens. He gardens, Rob. You didn’t tell me he’s also the hottest person I’ve ever seen in real life.”

Robin, the bastard that she is, only muttered, "Gross," and rolled her eyes as she finally succeeded in dislodging Eddie from where he’s feet had been planted on the somewhat sticky floor and getting him moving towards the booth.

“Robin,” he hissed.

“Just be cool,” she hissed back, “If you’re even capable of that.”

“I’m cool,” Eddie insisted, “I’m so cool.”

And then Robin is shoving him into the booth (across from Steve, thankfully) and sliding in next to him.

“Steve, this is Eddie,” she said, “Eddie – Steve.”

“Hey man,” Steve says, “Nice to meet you finally. Robin’s told me loads.”

Steve is grinning and it’s reaching all the way to his eyes, and they’re big and bright and brown and meeting his own eyes in full and it’s making Eddie’s heart thrum in a way he hasn’t really ever felt before, and someone should really revoke his allowed to speak freely card at least for a minute or two so he can't say something stupid, but nobody does so he says —

“Dude, I’m gonna marry you someday.”

Steve’s eyebrows fly up, but, if anything, his grin only gets wider as he looks at Robin.

“Rob – when you said this guy was crazy, I didn’t think you meant this crazy.”

Robin only gives him a resigned shrug.

“Not one of you listens to me.”

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #i have SO MANY THOUGHTS #but that musical is so hauntingly beautiful and i simply cannot write anything that would do it justice

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livwritesstuff · 7 days

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Love, Rest Your Head

Rating: Teen and Up CW: Canon Typical Injuries Tags: Pre-Season 4, Aftermath of Starcourt Mall, Aftermath of Torture, Season 4, Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Steve Harrington, Major Character Injury, Established Relationship, Eddie Munson Takes Care of Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Has Head Trauma, Mentions of Vomiting, Self Sacrificing Steve Harrington, Mentions of Major Character Death (In Reference to Hopper), Foreshadowing, Ambiguous Ending

💕—————💕 The news was pure devastation. Overhead shots of the Starcourt Mall burning. Flames engulfing the building on all sides, swallowing it up until it sat a collapsed, ashen mess. There was no structure. No semblance to any kind of store that was inside. Just dust. Blackened walls. Melted floor tiles.

Eddie sat on the edge of the couch cushion, left hand tucked harshly under his thigh, chomping down on his right hand’s fingernails. There was a metallic tang on his tongue, but he couldn’t get himself to stop. Not even when the raw, exposed parts of his skin bared themself as a tender ache in his mouth’s warmth. Nothing could stop him. In between bites, there were moments where he was holding his breath. Gasping for it when push eventually came to shove. At least it was air he was choking on, not bile.

His uncle was stoic in his recliner in the corner. Until, with the quietest and gruffest voice Eddie’s ever heard, Wayne said, “Your boy. He’s in the parking lot. Has to be.”

“What if he isn’t?” Eddie barely mustered. “What if—What if he’s not there in the parking lot with all those ambulances? What if Steve’s stuck in the debris and he can’t get out and nobody can hear him and then he doesn’t come home and I never—“ He was back to choking on his breath. Sipping at the smallest pockets of air he could manage.

Wayne didn’t answer. The promises that could be made in this moment, every single one of them could be a fallacy.

Then, the news reporter read out those who suffered in the fire. That crisped with the building. Ones that couldn’t be recovered. Ones that were found, yet only identifiable by the licenses in their pockets.

Jenna Kinling Parker Smith Tony Roberts Billy Hargrove…

Eddie bit his fingers harder at that last name. Maybe they didn’t run in the same circles or maybe they weren’t friends. But Billy was still a young dude. He had a life ahead of him. They had classes together. What if…What if…What if, rings loudly in Eddie’s head.

Except, Steve isn’t listed. Neither is his new friend, Robin. They aren’t…They weren’t found in the rubble. They weren’t believed to be in it either. And, as if on cue, the trailer’s phone begins to ring. Eddie is up and out of his seat before he has a chance to miss a single ring.

“Munson residence, Eddie speaking,” he answers hastily.

On the other end is the wet, nasally, raspy breathing of another person. The deeper the breaths, the more he can make out it’s somebody masculine. Their intakes are interrupted by small sniffles. Short bursting whimpers that come from sure pain, not pleasure.

“Hello?” Eddie speaks quietly.

The person gasps. Sobbing around the words, “Eddie…Eddie, I need help.” Steve.

“I’ll help, sweetheart,” he promises immediately. “What do you need? I—Uncle Wayne is here, too. We can help. We can—“

“‘M at the mall. And it’s all charred and…and gone. And I think I—I left your birthday present in Scoops and I’m sorry that I—My head hurts, Eds. It hurts and I’m bleeding and the paramed—they think…Billy’s dead and I watched him die and it scared me and—I don’t like him, I don’t like him at all but he looked sad and he looked…He’s dead, Eddie. I watched somebody die, Eddie,” Steve rambles. His words are heavily slurred. Barely breaking by his breath. Almost swirled by puke.

Before Eddie has the chance to interrupt, Steve is continuing. “I protected Robin from getting hurt,” he says seriously, gravely. But his next words are tiny, as if Eddie was listening to a child, not his eighteen year old boyfriend. “You’re going to be mad at me.”

“Why?” He asks. Shakes his head though, and asks instead, “Where should I pick you up? Does Robin have a ride home?”

“I got beat up again,” Steve barrels on. “’T’s really bad, Eds. Everything is ringing. Makin’ me nauseous.” His breaths grow heavier as if he’s ready to retch on his sneakers.

Eddie prepares himself to hear it all, because he knows it’ll happen. Knows it like the back of his hand, unfortunately. From how many other times Steve’s been concussed. Yet, he doesn’t care, saying, “I’ll take care of you here at home, but I need you to tell me where I need to pick you up. Does Robin need a ride?”

Steve mumbles, “She already left. Hugged her and everythin’. Rob—Robin’s safe. I protected her from getting hurt. They were going to hurt her, Eds. It would’ve been my fault for getting her involved.”

The words crawl under Eddie’s skin like spiders. He wants to scratch at himself, get them out of his head. Get away from how small each word is that comes from Steve’s mouth. He wants to find out who ‘They’ are and kill them. Wants to rip this world apart for making Steve sound so…horrified. But he just calmly asks, “Where are you, Steve? Where at the mall are you?”

“Front,” Steve mutters, “at the payphone. The one with all the gum on the back. It’s gross, Eds. I feel gross. Smell like—I’m sorry.”

Eddie just swallows harshly. Doesn’t know why Steve’s apologizing. But he’s scared shitless, that’s for sure. He grabs for his car keys on the dining table. “I’m going to hang up, Stevie. I’ll be there soon, okay?”

The last thing he hears is Steve coughing and retching up his lungs. Spiders work their way into his veins.

——— Sure enough, Steve’s by the payphone. Sitting with his knees up to his chest. Leaning against the thin pole of the phone. Inches away from whatever lunch he had last. Doesn’t look like much. Eddie just thought Steve was busy with work and relaxing at home. Though…Eddie’s starting to piece together that maybe Steve never left work. Like he’s been here way too long.

Steve shivers where he grasps to himself and Eddie approaches with great caution.

He crouches down to Steve’s level, keeps his hands to himself, and speaks softly. “Steve, it’s Eddie. I brought you a jacket. And some water. I’ve got crackers. You ready to go home?”

With his one good eye, Steve looks to him. Blood caked around his nose and mouth and chin. Eyebrow split, though covered with a butterfly bandage. His left eye is swollen shut and a deep, concerning purple. A part of Eddie almost wants to ask who left Steve here like this. To sit by himself and hold to his elbows. But, a stronger part of him cares too much about making sure Steve gets home.

Slowly, Steve reaches out his right hand and grasps at Eddie’s left wrist. Thumb harsh over his pulse point. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. Without any fanfare or warning, Steve’s eyes fill with tears. Streaming down his face in sluggish lines. “I was stupid and got in trouble again and now I’m all…I’m all broken and ugly and I smell really bad and you’re gonna have to stay awake with me because I’m not allowed to sleep and I—“

“Baby,” Eddie whispers lowly, “Steve, I’m just glad that you’re alive. I’d rather look after you all beaten up and bloody than…Well, y’know.”

“Why aren’t you mad at me?” Steve meekly asks.

“Do you want me to be mad at you?”

With great force, Steve shakes his head. Hissing and hiccuping at the pain that surges through him. “It hurts so bad,” he whimpers. “I just—They were going to hurt Robin and—and the kids. I couldn’t let them do that and now I—“

Eddie gently shushes him. “You don’t need to explain yourself right now, okay, sweetheart? We’ll talk about it when you’re better.”

“What if I never talk about it?”

He shrugs. Wraps his free hand over Steve’s where it still grips him. “Then you don’t talk about it,” he whispers. “Let me take you home, though? Give you the food and water I brought. Warm you up and change your clothes. Can clean your face,” Eddie lists. He cups the injured side of Steve’s face with a tentative hand, barely touching his swollen skin. “Clean this all up and brush your hair. Let you sleep.”

“I can’t sleep for long,” Steve reminds him.

“Wake you up every few hours, that’s fine. I don’t have school tomorrow, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“‘M’kay,” Steve agrees quietly. He’s drooping in Eddie’s hold. Exhaustion quickly swamping him. “Sorry if I throw up in the car.”

Eddie gently hefts them up off the ground, leads them towards the van, and gets Steve situated in his passenger seat. He murmurs, as he buckles Steve in, “I can clean up. But I’ll leave the window rolled down. I’ll drive slow. Do you want the jacket?”

Steve shakes his head softly. His eyes are closed and the rest of him is very still to his seat. As if moving anything physically pains him. It probably does, based on what Eddie’s able to see. “I don’t want to be reminded of the heat,” he state quietly.

“Okay,” Eddie whispers. He leans up into Steve’s space, presses a short kiss to his temple, and cranks the passenger window down. “Just lean towards the window a little. Rest. I’ve got you, baby.”

The car ride is incredibly slow, it makes Eddie antsy. But out of the corner of his eye, he notices Steve tensing at every gradual rumble and deep pothole. It makes Eddie want to just get out and push the van. He slides a hand off of the steering wheel and goes to grab Steve’s left wrist, but he jolts away. Head colliding solidly with the window frame.

“Don’t,” Steve bites. “Don’t touch me there,” he whispers.

Eddie swallows down the sudden rise of bile in his throat. “Okay, Steve,” he murmurs right back. “Do you…you need me to pull off for a second? Give you a break from the bumpy road?” Steve gives a slow and tentative nod.

He pulls to the shoulder, parks in silence, and just sits in the driver’s seat. Face forward, eyeing beyond the windshield. He’d turn on the radio, try to fill the gap between their bodies, but knows that the noise would be too much. Instead, he listens in on Steve’s audible deep breaths. Like he’s trying to ground himself to the carseat or maybe veer away from puking out the window. Eddie wants to touch and soothe, like he normally would during Steve’s concussions. But…he can’t. There are tears percolating in the corners of his eyes.

“You need water?” Eddie quietly asks.

“Please,” Steve mutters lowly. His voice is crackling and snotty wet.

Eddie moves slowly between the front seats, grabs an unopened bottle of water, and uncaps it. He leans across the center console to find a straw in the glove box. Plops it in the bottle and offers it up for Steve to take. “Slow sips,” Eddie states, “don’t need to make yourself sicker.” Steve angles his body away from the window, leans forward slightly, and takes the straw between his lips. Each swallow of water looks like he’s trying to consume rocks. His tongue working slowly, hesitantly against the straw. Testing it. “You’re doing a good job,” Eddie can only praise.

When Steve pops off the straw, it’s with a gasping breath. Catching and falling and catching again. He lolls his head on the seat, looking over to Eddie. Chest moving up and down with shallow, croaking shakes of air. “We can go,” he rasps, “I wanna sleep.”

The water bottle goes to the cup holders. And Eddie does what he’s told. Crawling slowly back home. Taking small pauses to check in with Steve, help him drink water, nibble on some crackers, rub his back when he hurls out the car window.

But when they make it back home, they move in complete and utter silence. Through the front door and to the couch. Wayne ogles the two of them, fear present in his eyes. His mouth hangs open, suckled dry of all words he could ever think to say. Eddie makes him grab a bowl of warm water and a rag.

And they just exist in silence.

In fear, Eddie now realizes, of whatever happened to Steve.

Because they’re not stupid. This wasn’t a fire. There was something else. Something more…disastrous. Dastardly. But Eddie places the bowl on the coffee table, sits on Steve’s right on the cushions, and turns them towards each other.

“Alright, I’ve gotta clean the blood off of your face, Stevie,” he encroaches their silence. “I’m going to be really careful. I’ll go slow. But I need you to tell me when you need a break, okay?” Steve blinks groggily at him. His eyes are dilated beyond belief. Eddie’s nauseous just looking at them. These aren’t the eyes he fell in love with.

These eyes are like terror in existential form.

Steve nods, though. He places a shaking hand on Eddie’s left knee. Doesn’t tighten it, doesn’t pet the fabric under his hand, just rests it there. As if he’s searching for an anchor.

Eddie wets the wash rag with the warm water. Raises it to Steve’s chin. “If this hurts, you need to tell me. Here we go.” The rag stains pink and crimson as soon as it touches Steve’s skin. He hates how hard he has to press just to work the blood off, but it’s dried to him. It’s coming off in flakes, Eddie sees the particles fall to Steve’s dirtied uniform. As he works the rag over Steve’s face, he can’t help but notice how stained and red the uniform is, too.

It used to be something Eddie could tease Steve about. Be flirtatious and saucy about it. Talk about stupid things with. Make dumb fantasies and see if Steve will play into them. But looking at it now only makes Eddie’s chest hurt. Makes his stomach turn uneasily. Shrivels something inside of him that will never live again. But he’ll get Steve into his clothes. Get him comfortable. Maybe he’ll burn the uniform when Steve isn’t looking. Rid of it like a demon needing to be expelled.

The last bit of the blood finally comes away, flaking from Steve’s nostrils to the washcloth. Eddie places it back in the pink tinted water. And then he looks back. At Steve’s child like eyes. And his split lip. The plum like bruise around his left eye.

Eddie’s never had homicidal thoughts, but today might just be the eye opener for him.

But he continues to be gentle. Offering, “Let’s get you some of my clothes. I’ll wash your hair in the bathroom sink. Then, you can rest.” Steve just nods, allows Eddie to pull him along to the bedroom, and change him out of his clothes. Ignores the slight bruising on his ribs, where he most likely struggled or fell. Tries to not think about the red, twisting lines across Steve’s chest, arms, and wrists from where he’d been tied. Just covers Steve back up in reds and blacks and soft things. And, while Steve is looking away, throws the Scoops uniform away in a nearby waste basket.

Washing his hair is no struggle. Steve goes listless and quiet when Eddie scrubs at his scalp, carefully detangles knots that were glued together by sticky blood. He barely blinks as he watches Eddie move and go through his hair washing routine. Doesn’t protest any of what Eddie chooses to do—even when he puts too much conditioner in the ends of his hair or doesn’t do two wash throughs with the shampoo, even if he uses a hair dryer instead of a towel. Allows him, which Eddie finds a little odd. He has an inkling, though, that it may just be the gentle touch that Steve doesn’t want to mitigate.

When they’re back in bed, Eddie lays flat on the mattress. Putting space between their two bodies. His alarm is set for three hours from now, where he’ll wake Steve up and make sure his concussion symptoms either are stagnant or lessening. But for now, he just stays put. Eyes up at his ceiling, stomach turning and knotting at whatever happened today.

Whatever happened almost doesn’t matter, knowing Steve made it out alive.

But there’s a haunting to him that Eddie can’t ignore.

Right when he thinks Steve is asleep and goes to close his own eyes, does he hear the smallest of statements.

“Hopper died, too,” Steve murmurs.

“No…”

Steve nods sagely against his pillow. “Heard about it through some of the kids I babysit. Guess he…Guess I wasn’t the only one to make a sacrifice.” Eddie hears him shift, coming closer. His body warmth radiating and tight against his rigid body. There’s a hesitant palm that slithers and sits on Eddie’s chest. Where his heart beats rabidly. “Could…Could’a been me.”

Eddie places his own hand over the back of Steve’s. Presses them together firmly. His chest caving with the push. “Don’t say that,” he harshly whispers. “Don’t…Steve, I thought it was going to be you. Please don’t say that.”

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I just…That’s the only thing I could think of before you got me. How I—I almost didn’t get to see you again.”

“At least you’re with me now, right? I’m just glad that you’re alive.”

“Yeah,” Steve croaks. “I just wish I could bring myself to tell you what happened.”

“Don’t need to do that, Steve. Just rest up and get better for me, alright?”

Steve shuffles closer. His head resting on Eddie’s shoulder. He nods. “Thank you. I love you,” he sleepily murmurs.

Eddie wraps an arm around his back and squeezes him tightly. “I love you, too, love bug. Get some sleep and I’ll check on you in a bit.”

The snores are a comfort after tonight.

——— And when he looks Steve in the eyes, mere seconds before he leaves for Vecna, Eddie understands the harrowing sacrificial fear. He’ll be the one to protect Steve now. “Make him pay,” he says. But he knows, reflected in Steve’s eyes, that there is finality in his stare. His stomach turns and his hands shake, but damnit, he’ll make sure that Steve won’t be the one drowning in blood this time.

He hopes to hear snores against his shoulder tomorrow night.

If night comes.

💕—————💕

#oh my god WHAT #this is gorgeous

108 notes · View notes

livwritesstuff · 8 days

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straw poll: How Many Times Can You Sleep In The Same Bed With A Guy Before It Starts To ✨Mean Something✨?

Because Steve's just there to be a good friend hold Eddie close through the night so Eddie knows what his breathing sounds like as he falls asleep help Eddie through the nightmares, right?(!??!)

or: just how many manners of sin does 'trauma' cover, exactly?

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

Or: Five Times Eddie Has To Ask For Help, Plus One Time He Doesn’t Need It Anymore (but asks anyway) ✨ for @penny00dreadful 💜

<<< two: wash🚿

💤🪦 three: sleep 🌗 🛌

Eddie shoots up in his bed, less afraid of choking on his own heart for its pounding than he is for gnashing it apart with his teeth, it’s surged so high and he can’t breathe, he doesn’t know if he wants to because it’s dark and he can’t see and last thing he did see was, was—

“Ed,” and it’s murmured so close, and the bed dips quick as warmth envelops Eddie’s frame, as a hand grabs one wrist, both wrists and crushes them between two bodies to feel, feel—

“Eddie, breathe, breathe, shhh,” and oh: that’s what he’d seen, what he always sees now: the images he remembers, and the things he’s been told of his own near-demise, but it’s not his body; it’s never his body and more, and worse, they’re always too late and he’s being told to breathe but he can’t, he can’t breathe because they failed, he failed and Steve’s not breathing, he’ll never breathe again—

“Right here, Eds, I’m right here,” and one hand lets go of him and starts carefully wiping at Eddie’s face, drying his eyes so they can focus and recognize not just the touch and the scent and the heat but the sight of the body wrapped around him.

“I’m with you, you’re okay,” Steve breathes, he breathes and Eddie can feel it, he can feel it and it makes no sense but it’s clear and it’s deep and deliberate and, and—

“Breathe with me, come on, just breathe,” Steve coxes a little like soothing a wounded animal and…that’s apt, Eddie feels small and skittish and he needs the warmth and the dawning truth of Steve’s weight against his bones; “it’s okay, everyone’s okay,” and yes, yes, that’s important, that’s so important but it’s not enough, there’s still blood pumping like it wants to leap from his mouth as he gasps because he cannot fucking breathe until—

“I’m okay.”

Steve says it as just part of an ongoing litany of reassurance, hopes to calm Eddie into, y’know, the basic needs of human survival, heart and lungs remembering how to move right but—

Steve’s okay.

It’s like Eddie heart and lungs had an agenda; like maybe they didn’t want to move right if the dream—a dream, a dream, just a dream, Steve’s chest lifts against him, falls, lifts again, and again, and again, real—but maybe neither was really invested in survival, if it all hadn’t just been a dream.

“We’re okay, Eds,” and Eddie doesn’t mean to gasp, to half moan and half whimper in something wreathed in pure relief, doesn’t plan to burrow into Steve like he does as Steve presses closer, closer, so it’s only logical, only the reasonable thing when Steve’s lips move against Eddie’s skin at the hairline, at the temple when he speaks, he’s just that close, y’know—

“Swear,” Steve murmurs, and he crushes their hands a little closer between both their chests, and his face is still so close because of it—no other reason, it can’t be any other reason—that his lips drag when he breathes, when he fucking vows:

“I swear we’re okay.”

Eddie nods, just nods; Steve keeps him tucked under his chin, safe: he lifts with his breathing, his heartbeat’s right there, taunt but true, realand maybe Eddie nuzzles there a little, so fucking sue him.

It’s been like this, though. Lately. More than just lately; it’s been like this for a while. Steve had always been around for the nightmares, and he always came to ease Eddie through them but he ended up back on the couch if Wayne wasn’t there, or in the chair in the corner, or the sleeping bag they’d found and he’d set up on the floor before Eddie could protest—and he never wanted to push too hard because, because…

At least on the floor, Eddie could hear him breathe.

But then, then the nightmares stopped being highlight reels of reality; then they turned, and they’re focused on…variations on a theme.

A theme of losing one Steve Harrington.

And then Eddie grew clingy, without even meaning to, or planning to, and Steve never fought him. It took a couple weeks before Steve didn’t only come to him as soon as Eddie started gasping, screaming and then stayed with him through the night, no: then Steve just started coming with him to bed and opening his arms to roll into, to wake up shaking against.

It didn’t make the nightmares go away but it made them…bearable. Because proof of the lies in them was there waiting to wrap around him, if he wasn’t already buried in that warm, fuzzy, living chest.

Where Eddie’s pressed tight, now. And he…he couldn’t say what tips the scales. What changes things when nothing is different. Steve’s heartbeat’s a little faster, maybe Eddie’s gasping heavier, more of Steve in his lungs than usual. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Whatever the reason, Eddie lets his open lips drag along Steve’s collarbone. For proximity’s sake.

“Steve?”

And Eddie’s back to feel like his heart’s less a threat like the bat tails choking than it is for the biting in half where it’s caught on his tongue, like an offering, or else damnation.

Maybe both.

“Hmm?” Steve’s hum’s a little sleepy but he’s quick to maneuver them, to face Eddie and rove eyes over Eddie’s face with fully-wakeful care; concern.

Offering. His heart’s a manic wild thing thrashing on his tongue when he makes to speak but it’s…

It’s Steve’s. His heart is Steve’s and Eddie’s lost but in maybe the best most terrifying way imaginable; Eddie is beholden to Steve with all of him, and if the ungainly pulp shaking out of his ribs and up past his throat’s going to fall out with the words he has to whisper, well.

It’s Steve’s, and whether he feels anything at all in return, he’s been more than the word kind knows how to hold; maybe he’ll be gentle with it even in rejecting how it shakes, for him.

Kinda, just for him. Like this: just for him.

“What is this?”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t gesture or look anywhere but in Steve’s eyes but: their hands are still linked, and his fingers twitch without him meaning to move them at all but Steve.

Steve grips tighter. Steadies him with question; immediate.

“Trauma,” Steve huffs a little, humorless, but his breath’s so near, so warm: “or so they tell me.”

“No, I mean,” and Eddie’s shaking his head then because; “yeah, yes, definitely that, but,” and Eddie can be brave, he has to be brave because if he’s not brave this will maybe break him: the middle space without an answer, he needs some kind of answer—

“I mean this,” and now Eddie forces himself to tighten his fingers, and presses into Steve closer: Steve’s heart isn’t wild, but it’s not calm either. It’s not sleep-slow. It’s…untamed.

Eddie doesn’t know what it means.

But Steve looks at their hands, pulls Eddie’s fingertips through the curls on his chest, starts tracing Eddie’s nails from cuticle to tip.

“I’ve never been good with subtle,” Steve barely breathes, and his heart’s faster for it, where Eddie can feel; “or moving slow,” and then he laughs; it’s not humorous now either, more self deprecating, and Eddie…Eddie doesn’t like that.

Eddie loves this man too much.

“Kinda notorious for wearing my heart on my sleeve and all,” and Steve shrugs, only pauses the motions of their hands for half a breath, less than a heartbeat at the going pace. It feels too small for something so…significant.

Something precious like that.

“Easy to get stomped on,” Eddie finds the words tumbling out, almost aggrieved; he heard the rumors, even among their friends, their family but faced with it so stark like this, naked chest to chest, it’s…unthinkable.

It hurts, just to think of.

“Yeah,” Steve exhales; fucking…Eddie thinks that sounds resigned: “I know.”

Eddie doesn’t expect the whine that escapes him, a little jagged on the frantic pulse he can feel all in his teeth; he doesn’t expect it, but it’s not big enough. It’s not deep enough for the ache in him at that…acceptance, that expectation of hurt.

“I didn’t,” Eddie starts, desperate for him to know; however this plays out, Steve cannot ever, ever believe his heart isn’t…isn’t the most invaluable gift in, in—

In any universe. Any dimension. Across any existence at all worth knowing.

He doesn’t think the words he knows could do the sentiment justice, though. And words, shit: he should be good with those but, even if he knew the right ones. Hell just fought up his still-pounding heart with a flail and that’s…

He grabs Steve's hand tighter, fit to break bones: the need unquestionable.

He hopes the want, the devotion in him translates just as clear.

And then, oh holy fuck—then.

Steve holds back just as hard.

“I wanted to try to keep the ball in your court,” Steve exhales, shaky; and Eddie knows, he knows they’re on the same page. Steve’s heart’s so fast. Eddie’s is faster.

“I told you,” Eddie starts, more like he’s trying to figure it all out for himself more than arguing anything but, how could Steve had thought Eddie didn’t, how could—

Why would anyone trust Eddie with any kind of sports-oriented ball—

“With the shower, and—“

“I’m not that guy anymore,” Steve barely whispers; “you might’ve had a crush on me then but now I’m,” Eddie feels Steve swallow; hears his heartbeat maybe skip; “I think, I mean, I hope I’m a different person.”

Eddie has to breathe at the notch in Steve’s throat for a couple seconds, maybe minutes; this…this sounds like…like maybe…

“And just because the ball’s in your court,” Steve’s pulse kicks up, and up, and—

“Didn’t mean my heart wasn’t still held out for the stomping,” and he’s twirling Eddie’s hair, he’s twirling his fingers through Eddie’s hair while he talks about the impossible possibility of, of what: Eddie…not wanting, of Eddie doing the stomping—

Eddie can barely swallow.

“You saying you wouldn’t help bathe all your friends in similar circumstances?” he mostly kinda squeaks; he can barely hear over the rush of his own blood.

“I’m saying not all of them,” there’s a little smile in Steve’s voice, but his pulse is still knocking against where Eddie pressed into his neck; “but I wouldn’t be risking my heart for it either way.”

And Eddie…Eddie thinks he’s maybe dying, for real this time. He thinks maybe he’s never felt alive before this moment, ever.

He blames the confusion, for not thinking through his next words.

“Would it be too not-slow,” Eddie mouths against the pulsepoint jumping at him, fit perfect to his lips; “or unsubtle, if I said I thought I was in love with you?”

He might not think the words through, but hell if he regrets them for a goddamn second.

Not when Steve doesn’t move to pull away, doesn’t let go at all, holds on tight—but the pulse against Eddie’s lips redefines what it means to hammer, to race.

Eddie starts thinking about turning, looking Steve in the eye and hoping to find what he…what he thinks he’ll find but there’s still a part of him that’s scared, that’s not brave, that’s…

But then Steve’s moving, raising up to meet Eddie’s gaze: so bright in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark. Lips open, breathing heavy, their chests still flush but now Steve’s reaching, framing Eddie’s face and just…looking.

Nah, no: staring.

“Steve?” Eddie thinks it’s more a matter of his lips moving than of sound coming out, especially as he tries to follow the pad of Steve’s thumb as it traces the corner of Eddie’s lips, careful, so careful, like Eddie’s glass and wonder all at once and—

“I think I’m in love with you, too.”

And then Steve’s leaning in, then Eddie’s learning that Steve tastes like leftover toothpaste and some kind of spice they hadn’t eaten, that Eddie doesn’t know: thinks, believes is what dawn tastes like, the breaking of day itself in Steve’s mouth, his veins.

They move slow, slick, tongues less exploring and more kinda worshipping; Eddie’s been kissed harder and faster and deeper for the technical definitions of any of the terms but he’s never felt so dizzy, so spun from the axis of his world, the line that splits his heart in halves; never like someone was tongue his soul out gentle to weigh and bathe in, like, adoration.

Eddie doesn’t have a word for how it steals his breath.

“Hey,” he tried to gasp anyway when they break apart for air; “hey, Stevie?”

“Hmm?” Steve hums, running the line of his nose up Eddie’s jaw, and Eddie throws his head back, shivers when Steve licks at the fading scars as he goes. When he makes it to kiss Eddie’s temple—because now he means to, or maybe he always did and, oh, oh shit, what if he always did—then he leans back and looks at Eddie, and there’s…

There’s so much in those eyes. It makes Eddie feel…almost-brave.

“What if I took the ‘think’ out?”

Steve tips his head, fucking adorable.

“Whatcha mean?”

Eddie swallows, and soaks up that gaze some more: almost-brave.

“I said I think I’m in love with you,” Eddie exhales; “what if I said that, but I took out the part where I say ‘think’?”

And oh wow: he’d thought, he’d known Steve was some inexplicable light before.

He’s putting their whole galaxy’s suns, every one of them Eddie doesn’t even know—the way his eyes shine and his smile beams puts every goddamn one of them to shame.

And Eddie doesn’t expect it, exactly, when Steve gathers his hands again and crushes them to his chest just to murmur low:

“Then I’d say this is yours to do with whatever you’d like,” and he moves Eddie’s palms to cup around the beat that’s still so fast and hard but not pulled taut anymore, closer to sugar high, or a rubber ball ricocheting around the ceiling just for the joy in it; “stomping included,” and he smiles for it like a joke but…but Eddie would never so—

He leans in and this time he captures the lips, and he presses hard, dares to nip at Steve’s lower lip and bite out:

“Never,” and he meets Steve’s eyes, watching them dilate impossibly in too little light and he just, he just…

He falls into Steve, presses his cheek close and, and feels him. Somehow all of it’s new.

“You okay?” Steve eventually asks, but doesn’t pull away, just slides a hand up the line of Eddie’s spine to steady, to keep him like there’s a question of Eddie going anywhere but here every again; and then just leans into Eddie’s cheek, magnetic-like.

And okay is such a foolish, insignificant word. Eddie could hold the weight of the earth ten times over, he feels strong enough; Eddie could swallow the stars and it wouldn’t matter because he has his own sun right in front of him.

Eddie doesn’t know if he understood the word happy before this moment, and every synonym for it that means the exact same thing’s a lot like okay: just too fucking small.

“Yeah,” Eddie answers, and breathes Steve in so deep his lungs kinda shake for it before he breathes back out; “yeah, sweetheart,” and fuck, fuck—Eddie Munson’s not just in love.

Eddie Munson is loved in return. Eddie Munson loves, and is loved back. That’s…that’s just…

“I’ve never been better.”

divider credits here & here

👾 title credit here

💫 ao3 link here

#oh yes #ohhhhhh yes #goddamn stunning this is

104 notes · View notes

livwritesstuff · 9 days

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STWG prompt 18/4/24

prompt: the beemer

pairing/character(s): steddie

"I didn't see your van outside, you need a ride home?" Gareth asks as everyone's packing up their dice sets.

Eddie looks up from scribbling notes down about important character actions with a hum, and notices that the concerned look on Gareth's face is mirrored by Jeff and Freak.

The freshmen members of the club aren't interested, whispering excitedly amongst themselves about something that will probably cause Eddie problems at their next session. (He catches some complaints about biking home too. Losers.)

"What? No, no, don't worry man." He assures with a smile, and goes back to his notes. Steve's picking him up today. They have a date. Which, sure, he's been on a few official dates with Steve now, but they still make him so... jittery and excited.

He shakes his head at the half-finished page of his notebook and readies his pen. He can't forget that Mike now has a bag of holding, so he writes that down and then closes the notebook and nods to himself, satisfied.

When he looks back up his bandmates are still staring at him in concern.

"What?"

"You literally never leave your van at home." Jeff points out, and then Freak adds on:

"You call it your child sometimes."

"Hey. Pac-Van is a she, thank you very much." Eddie says, "But seriously, it's fine. I just got a ride this morning and he's picking me up too."

He hasn't gotten round to telling them about him and Steve yet. He knows they'll take great pleasure in making fun of him getting with a jock. You know, because of all those rants he likes to go on at the lunch tables about said jocks... Whatever.

"From Wayne?"

"No." He rolls his eyes at the questioning and shoves his stuff into his backpack, then makes a quick decision. Fuck it, "I promise I'll be fine, you big babies. Harrington's a good driver."

"Harrington?!" They all ask in sync, and that gets the attention of their newer recruits, who are still chattering away. Their heads all snap over to them.

"Why're you talking about Steve?" Mike asks, looking vaguely disgusted. Dustin elbows him in the side.

"Don't worry your angsty little head about it, Wheeler." Eddie says with a grin, and then finally picks up his backpack, "Now I have places to be and people to see so I trust you all to leave this room as you found it? I gotta go."

And with that he leaves the room, ignoring Freak's voice from behind him.

"I thought he was just giving you a ride home."

He makes it to the parking lot just as the beemer pulls in, and finds a smile appearing on his face at the sight. Because he's feeling dramatic, he does a wild little wave at the car. He can't see Steve yet, but he knows that made him chuckle, or at least smile.

"Hey, taxi for Munson?" Steve yells out of his window as he slows the car to a stop, and Eddie's smile widens.

"Oh, we're roleplaying tonight, are we?" He asks as he walks around to the passenger side and gets in. He's pretty sure Steve rolls his eyes at him, but he's also pretty sure he's doing it in a fond way. Hopefully.

Steve doesn't drive off immediately, a glint of something intense in his gaze as he looks at Eddie. He's leaning toward Eddie a little too, and having Steve Harrington's full attention on him is not something Eddie's used to yet, so an unbidden blush appears on his cheeks.

"Good day?"

"Great day, Stevie."

"Good. Can't wait to hear about it over dinner." Steve nods, and his eyes flicker down to his lips for a second, and then he leans out of Eddie's space to start the car up again.

Right. Public space. Homophobic small town. Yadda yadda, kissing can wait until they're safely indoors.

Eddie's too busy fiddling with the radio as the beemer drives off to notice Freak, Gareth and Jeff stood staring at the car from in front of the school doors, perplexed looks on their faces, as the freshmen run over to the bike racks. But he'll definitely be hearing all about their thoughts at band practice.

#oml i love this

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livwritesstuff · 11 days

Text

Hazel posts a tiktok that starts with a view of Steve folding laundry.

Hazel: Pop

Steve, looking warily at the camera: What?

Hazel: If you and Dad got divorced–

Steve: Oh, come on, Haze.

Hazel: No-no-no-no, just hear me out.

Hazel: If you and Dad got divorced, how long would it take for me and Moe and Robbie to Parent Trap you back together.

Steve: *very long pause as he clearly considers the question*

Steve: Why did we get divorced?

Hazel: A dumb reason, like in the movie.

Steve: So how long has it been since we last saw each other?

Hazel: Well...no. It's not a shot-for-shot remake of the movie. You'd probably be, like, co-parenting or whatever.

Steve: How long have we been divorced?

Hazel: A long time. Since I was a baby.

Steve: *another pause*

Steve: Yeah, that...makes sense.

Hazel: Okay, don't be rude.

Steve: Who’s dating someone else?

Hazel: What?

Steve: The dad in the movie is dating someone else. So which one of us is the one dating somebody?

Hazel: Oh. I don’t know.

Steve: I bet it’d be your dad. You know what – you wouldn’t need to Parent Trap us because I’d already be trying to get back together with him on my own out of spite.

Hazel: Oh-kay we might need a part 2.

#Steve is Invested In The Conversation #steve: wait so am i dennis quaid or natasha richardson?#hazel: ……dad’s not cool enough to be either of them so you can take your pick #steddie #liv’s steddie dads verse #steddie dads #steve harrington #eddie munson #hazel's tiktok page

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livwritesstuff · 11 days

Text

recovering!Eddie Needs Help With The Whole Showering Thing💦

Good thing Steve's there to help give Eddie a goddamn stroke at the idea of being naked in front of him? help him, huh?

or: put-up-or-shut-up time, Edward Munson

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

Or: Five Times Eddie Has To Ask For Help, Plus One Time He Doesn’t Need It Anymore (but asks anyway) ✨ for @penny00dreadful 💜

<<< one: drink 🧊

🧼 two: wash 🫧🚿

“You’ve basically got two choices, man.”

Eddie folds his lips over on themselves, mashes them together until it fucking hurts, might put the last of the stitches in the gouge out of the left side out of their misery early and pop them clean out of the skin for the force of his, his…

“Pout all you like, dude, they’re not changing.”

He is not. Fucking. Pouting.

He is a grown goddamn man.

“I reject your binary options, Steven,” Eddie volleys, because he’s not pouting, he is applying logic to an honestly-offensively illogical proposal like a mature adult; he is rightly pushing back against two unacceptable options when another has to exist, obviously, because the ones presented are impossible and so there must be a possible one he hasn’t found yet. One that’s just hiding from him. Sneaky.

“Reject all you want, man,” Steve scoffs, and leans back with arms crossed over his chest, stretching his sweater across the expanse and that right there is why there has to be a secret hidden third option waiting for him somewhere, Jesus H. fucking Christ: “they’re not going to change.”

Eddie blinks probably too long, too many times; is quiet for the whole span of moments before he decides deflection is really his only way forward, here.

“You’re very cruel sometimes,” he laments with the best sigh he can heave with the remaining stitches in him; “leaves me positively despairing, almost.”

And it was a good, solid, drawn-out sigh, that he heaved, just for the record. Because there are fewer stitches holding him together today than there were yesterday, and fewer yesterday than last week, and it’s progress, there is so much progress—

It’s just that progress is a very big reason for why he has this particular goddamn problem right now.

To set the stage: he’s been home for almost a week. The freedom is glorious. The new trailer the Feds set them up with is a little bigger, close enough layout though to still feel like home. His room is almost suspiciously similar given that 98% of his belongings were collateral damage or in government lockup. Certain questions Steve had asked him over the past weeks make a little more sense; the main orchestrator of the set up likewise clear on context. Eddie is warm with it every time he thinks about it. Which is whenever he’s in his room. And whenever he sees Steve.

Which is probably the main thing to add, for context: Eddie had been grateful as fuck for Steve while he was in the hospital, the man rarely leaving his side, usually just to check on Max who, while not yet awake, was making progress in healing and Eleven—who Eddie’s finally met now and kind of fucking adores—thinks she finally understands what’s blocking her ability to reach Red, meaning she can work on obliterating it: all good signs. And if Steve’s abounded presence did absolutely fuck all for Eddie’s old and apparently latent crush on the asshole jock-king from high school, flamed into kind of a fucking inferno over the course of spring break—if Steve’s steadfast presence and tireless attention to Eddie’s needs in the hospital had only managed to tame it into some kind of big and bright and undying eternal fucking flame—and that’d be a good song title, he needs to remember that—but if that was the payoff, as it were?

The burn of it—incredible and unbearable alike—was kind of almost secondary to the mixed emotions Eddie was having over leaving the hospital and losing this; losing Steve.

Except—and here’s the fucking kicker—he doesn’t. He doesn’t…lose Steve. Like, not at all.

Sure, maybe Steve goes home more, like, touches base at his own house, and he pops to the hospital where Eddie currently isn’t anymore to check on Max, but on the flipside Eddie is awake more and so he gets to soak up all the time Steve is here, in the trailer, next to Eddie, breathing air in the same space, breathing the same air as Eddie and, and, and—

“Look,” Steve’s sighing, slapping his thighs—such fucking distracting thighs—and leaning in pointedly on his palms; “Wayne’s pulling the night shift,” he nods at Eddie’s little TV tray with the crust of half a grilled cheese and a little cup of his medications; “you take your pills, you’ll sleep until after he’s turned in,” then Steve leans back, lifts a finger demonstratively: “so there’s another day.”

Eddie pouts, now, sees where this is going.

“Wayne might be pulling night shifts all week, in fact,” Steve adds, another finger pointed upward, counting in the air.

Eddie doesn’t nibble his cold crust petulantly or anything. Like, he does nibble. And it is cold.

But petulant; him?!

Never.

“The nurse isn’t due by until Thursday,”and Steve pauses before arching his brow even higher; “afternoon,” and he raises two fingers for that and Eddie’s got enough presence of mind to shoot back, even if it’s muffled, bread still in his mouth:

“You saying I smell?”

Steve’s eyeroll is such a fucking impressive feat it should be, like, an Olympic sport. But it’s probably too arousing for national television, so. Shit, that wouldn’t work.

“I am saying,” Steve draws out the word obnoxiously and why is that attractive, good fucking god: “you’re itching places you’re not even fucking stitched up,” he pokes at Eddie unapologetically in a safe place on his still-fairly-bandaged body and Eddie jumps harder than he should, but makes sure he grins for it, that he doesn’t play up the annoyance or the shock because one, Steve’s eyes go wide and incredulous and kinda fucking scared, like he knows he didn’t touch anything healing or tender, because Eddie’s thinks Steve knows his wounds mapped out so goddamn well he could draw them out blind and he didn’t touch anything bad actually, and that brings up two, which is: Eddie didn’t even have to exaggerate his reaction; he hasn’t been touched playfully in so long and he didn’t realize how much he missed it, how much his body missed it and he’s also kind of fucking thrilled it’s Steve, who broke the sad little standstill—Eddie makes sure to laugh a little and it’s not fucking hard once he starts because the way the tension melts off Steve in a huff is a shot of adrenaline, a hit of dopamine, a bubble of joy stretched to bursting and then fucking popping to spill warm and gooey in Eddie’s chest and he—

What the fuck is happening to him?

But then Steve’s poking him again and he twitches for it and just laughs more because fuck he missed that but also fuck he wants this to mean something and it’s wild and insane and he kind of doesn’t know what to do with it at all when Steve leans in and whispers slyly:

“So I am guessing you’d feel better with a shower.”

It’s not a lie. It’s not a lie but when he says it, particularly paired up with how he says it?

How the fuck can blood run hot and cold all at once?

Because Eddie does want a fucking shower, so he doesn’t feel fucking gross. And Eddie knows he needs help: moving like that, reaching what needs reached, and fuck all, but avoiding all the bandages, for fuck’s sake—but.

But: there’s this line, newly discovered beyond theory for one Eddie Munson, that divides an idle crush from an active wanting; that separates your fantasy jerk-off material from something that sits and grows branches and roots, heavy and tight and real in your chest.

Basically: there’s a difference between imagining what sucking pretty boy asshole King Steve off in the locker rooms might be like and coming hard in the privacy of your own bed for the gorgeous absurd impossibility of it, and the genuine article, not a king but something worse, something more like, like a benevolent god for how he speaks, how he touches, tends to Eddie so careful but sure, so goddamn competent and beautiful, dear god, he’s so much more breathtaking up close, but it’s not even that, it’s not even that, or well, it’s that, but it’s so much more than high-school-distanced-Eddie could have guessed even in his quickest, most satisfying jack-sessions, because Steve as a human being?

Fucking…captivating.

Funny. Bitchy. Cares so goddamn much it makes his heart crack wide to see it, let alone be the focus of it but then he’s so strung tight, so anxious with frontline reflexes that shatter that cracked heart and let it bleed with the desperate fucking need to care for him in kind but somehow tenfold but then you’ll always fail because this level of compassion and just, just this pure kind of love, how can anyone match it, which is where Steve has to land in benevolent god territory, some ineffable chaotic good, and Eddie—

Well. Yeah.

Of course, Eddie’s quiet for the whole of running this through his head and Steve’s taken the entry to care some more and cross over to Eddie, move his tray and hold out his hands expectantly. Like Eddie’s got a choice in the clear intention Steve has to…haul him to his feet?

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”

And oh, wow, good thing Eddie's not actively dying anymore, because his heart goddamn stops for that, no getting around it for the way it bangs upon restarting; and if he'd still been half-dead regarding the rest of his body, that'd probably have done him in because Jesus flying fuck.

So it’s: haul him to his feet and drag him to the shower. Which he does, so careful but so precise, when Eddie’s mind blanks out and loses the window available to protest by way of stunned silence, which continues all the way to the bathroom where Steve lowers him to the closed toilet lid, again so careful, and goes to work.

Readying a shower. Eddie’s shower.

Which he needs help with. Lots of help.

While he’s, as indicated clearly: fucking bare ass naked.

And not even just in front of Steve, no, nope. Not that that wouldn’t be bad enough. But this?

This is him actively needing Steve’s help. Like…hands-on help.

Eddie thinks his heart’s about ready to crash into his chest wall for the reckless speed it’s taken to racing at because, just…

Holy fucking hell.

“Skipping gym class may have done half the work of failing your ass, but it’s not like you never showed,” Steve points out, still unbothered, so, so fucking unbothered when Eddie’s over here with palms sweaty enough to leave wet-marks on his sweats; “you came into the showers,” Steve barrels on as he moves the bottles of shampoo and the bar of soap out of the way for Eddie to maneuver in, with help, with Steve’s help;

“More than once,” Steve tacks on and Eddie has to blink, has to refocus on what they fuck was being said: he came into the showers. More than once.

Right.

“Wow, thanks for noticing,” Eddie quips, or tries to; it falls fucking flat, and for the way Steve stills, and then sighs with, like, the whole of him, it’s obvious he missed his mark.

“Eddie,” Steve starts, and pulls away from where he’d been learning to start the water, to warm it up right.

“Look,” Eddie breathes out shaky, because fucking hell; “it’s not like…that. It’s not the same.”

Steve stills, and doesn’t know what to expect of the way he freezes, back to Eddie but his muscles going tight beneath his shirt, and Eddie’s stomach drops preemptive-like, because, because—

“Oh,” Steve’s voice gets a little sharp around the edges; “so it’s okay when thirty dicks are swinging alongside yours, I get it.”

Except it really doesn’t sound like Steve fucking gets it; not least because Steve wouldn’t be fighting this, wouldn’t be putting up the front of pushing the point if he did get it. It he got it for real.

“It’s different when it’s you,” and honestly the words come out before Eddie can think them through; they’re not inaccurate but when he hears them out loud he winces because it sounds wrong no matter what he means and—

When he sees Steve’s face fall, eyes so wide, that flash of hurt, he, just: fuck.

He hurts too; he might even hurt harder.

“Jesus,” Eddie half-gasps, half-pleads already because no, no, fucking no; “not like that—“

“No,” and oh god, if Eddie ever thought about what real heartbreak felt like, he only has to hear that voice, in that tone, because Jesus fuck, he feels like a hand’s gone into his chest, snapped a couple ribs, and used the sharp bits to twist his heart around like a goddamn knitting needle.

“No, man, I get it,” but Steve’s tone’s too dull, too measured, and his shoulders are too tight, and he’s not looking at Eddie at all and Eddie kinda want to fucking cry, and—

“No need to explain,” and oh, god, did Steve’s voice break a little? Did Eddie cause that, all on his fucking own? What kind of monster is he, and all for his goddamn…what, shame? Pride? Cowardice? God, he can’t, he can’t let this happen, he can’t let this keep going—

“Maybe I can, like, get you some washcloths? And like, a bar of soap, just for now,” and fuck, no, shit, Steve’s rambling in that anxious way that’s also kind of….mindless, robotic and hollow and then he looks up, finally; he hadn’t been looking at all and Eddie thinks he can hear his own heart crack for the way those eyes are too damn bright, and look too fucking dead all the same:

“Is it still, like, a problem if I help? So long as you’re mostly covered,” Steve asks, and god, it’s like…it’s like he’s a stranger. It’s not like he’s mean, or distant really, but it’s like Eddie was welcome inside this door to him, pulled in close from the threshold and welcome and now it’s not the the doors shut in his face, nothing so definitive or rejecting: more like the door was gone and never there.

And that hurts…so much fucking more.

“Or, all the chairs are too big but maybe a stool,” Steve’s saying, moving things around in the bathroom where Eddie’s followed him, that voice still tomblike where it should be filled with sun; “just gotta make sure the bandages stay dry, do you think you can—“

“Steve.”

And the man stills, a bar of Ivory soap denting in the shapes of his nails for the way his hand’s clenched and…Eddie was scared. Of losing. Of being tossed aside, which would hurt with anyone, for anything. But the things he’s started feeling now, for Steve, changing the shape of him as much as his healing scar but for the better, if somehow far more terrifying—losing that, even where it lives alone and unrequited, and Eddie’s suspects also only half-formed yet even for how big it stands?

Losing the source of the star in Eddie’s chest would do him in quicker than the fucking bats ever had a chance to.

And the feeling of seeing Steve think…come to the conclusions he’s coming to now because Eddie’s a coward, like he’s misstepped or not given enough or said the rough thing or been supportive or, or, or—

The look on Steve’s face, and the crack in his voice: they’re causing pain under Eddie’s ribs in a way he hadn’t even considered the torment of.

And Eddie’ll probably crumble if this goes wrong, if Steve flinches away for knowing and if Eddie

loses this thing, this person whose presence he’s already grown to depend on, not for the help Eddie needs but for the >i>person Steve Harrington is: but he’ll fall apart anyway if he lets things stand as they are and he refuses to be the reason Steve’s pulled down in the collapse.

So he reaches, and fights the way his heart drops when Steve tenses as Eddie tries to nudge him into turning around, into facing Eddie. Into looking him in the eyes and seeing, or else, Eddie hopes like hell that he will see—

“It is different, when it’s you,” Eddie makes sure he says it careful, gentle; that he pitches it like a prelude to the way he’s gotta give up the cowardice, gotta face the music and be brave for this beautiful boy in front of him who’s scared for all the wrong reasons, for the lie of him somehow being the fuck up here, like he’s the one who did anything wrong—

Impossible. Impossible, so Eddie’s gotta pull back the curtain and if he holds his breath around it then—doesn’t fucking matter. So long as he says it.

“Because I never had an,” he chokes just a little, coughs around it and clears his throat too much; “umm, well, like,” and he stumbles, he stumbles but he tells himself it’s acceptable, that it’s to be expected, gotta build momentum to get this out:

“Never had an arguably-debilitating crush on those other guys,” Eddie finishes, a little shaky but without a hint of nervous laughter, closer to nausea than anything, and yeah: given that he can’t seem to get fucking words out when he tries to just say it, and shit: words are kinda his thing, y’know?

But the fact that he can barely string any of them together makes it really clear, at the very least inside his own chest: it’s debilitating, alright, and it’s already far more than the high school crush that started years ago. It’s…it’s so much more than that, now which, fuck.

Fuck, can Steve hear the truth of it in the shaking, the stuttering? Does he know?

“Plus y’know, eww,” Eddie covers up nervously, always with the babbling, the lunge for distraction; “I didn’t go perusing the dick selection in the Hawkins locker room on the regular, please give me some credit,” and he tries so fucking hard to end on comic disgust, he tries, he thinks he might be shaking, he’s—

He’s being caught by the wrists. He’s being pulled in chest to chest so his own can heave with the trembling gasps he’s not even trying to fight but that can’t really build to their potential against the wall of Steve’s chest but; he can’t feel his heart racing against that sturdy splay of chest, he’s held so tight. He can’t kinda feel Steve’s heartbeat too, faster but not like Eddie’s. Just…faster than normal. It kinda feels like it should mean something. Eddie doesn’t move of his own choosing, but also can’t manage to stop with the shaking. Which is…not ideal.

“Eddie?” And Steve’s looking up at him, chin tipped down so he can glance through those goddamn lashes, so Eddie can have proof in the wild off-pace thump his heart gives, that rattles his bones just for extra proof that ‘crush’ alone left the building long ago. He mostly just…just tries not to tremble, mostly wills his knees not to give out even if he trust with everything in him that Steve’ll catch him, it’s just—

Steve looks up at him, and says his name like it’s delicate, like it’s worth something, like he is worth something, then he’s gathering Eddie’s hands in his and that’s, that’s not normal, it’s not for balance or to help guide him save where he need to go: no. No, Steve raises their joined grasps and Eddie’s pulse skips twice to think they’re going to Steve’s lips but he just lifts them to his forehead like a touchstone and breathes for a few long moments, the color on his cheeks changing shade before he sighs long and deep and brings Eddie’s hands under his chin before he whispers:

“Let me help you shower,” and maybe it’s not spoke like a question, but Eddie knows it’s a choice and how; how can this man still want to touch him, see him, he can’t, he can’t—

“Steve,” Eddie barely breathes because of all the ways he’d maybe envisioned this going, from worst case scenario to impossible fantasies, the possibility of it all just…kinda being a non-thing, taken wholly in stride?

That wasn’t in the cards he’d prepared for. Eddie…doesn’t know how to handle that.

“Let me help you,” Steve repeats, as soft and like a given as the first time but then he averts his eyes again and sucks in a breath through his teeth:

“Or, I guess,” he huffs, swallows, really is the braver of them for how quick and firm he meets Eddie’s eyes, then: to ask:

“Do you want me to?” and Eddie’s heart clenches like every way it’s ever clenched before was a trial run, because this is a squeeze and a twist for how earnest he not just sounds but looks, how big and bright and honest eyes are and he’s so beautiful, he’s so fucking beautiful—

“If you don’t, that’s,” Eddie must be staring, quiet for too many seconds in a row because Steve sounds just as earnest but…can you be earnest about being hesitant? About giving someone the space and letting them hold the reins entirely? Jesus, it’s, this is…

“Yeah,” Eddie’s a little breathless, probably doesn’t sound as sure as he wants to but maybe sounds as sure as he can because he’s fucking taken aback, okay? Steve…people in general aren’t this good, y’know?

“Yeah, if you,” Eddie gestures between them, between Steve and Eddie’s crotch because, because, then more generally, more vague mostly to buy time, mostly because Eddie doesn’t even know what the fuck to do with this except, except say yes because he’s grateful, because he’s shell-shocked, because…

“If you’re okay with it,” because if Steve’s is, then: yes.

But Eddie’s gotta make sure.

But of course then there’s Steve, who never once let go of his hands, and now he’s squeezing them, and looking Eddie square in the eyes once more until Eddie returns the gesture; not nearly as steady, but fuck does he try.

“I am here,” Steve speaks clear, enunciates every syllables and barely fucking blinks; “so that I can help you,” and it’s the way he exhales while still holding Eddie’s gaze that nearly does Eddie in before Steve kinda just breathes:

“Okay?”

Eddie’s kinda proud he managed to nod because goddamn.

Given permission, he’s quick to work; he helps Eddie to lean against the closed toilet lid and then he’s shimmying Eddie’s sweats down, waiting for Eddie’s to step out once they’re pooled to the floor, meets Eddie’s eyes with hands on the waist of Eddie’s boxers and Eddie flushes so fucking hot he might set flame to something if he’s not careful but he inclined his head and Steve’s quick about it, stretches the elastic out extra wide around his hips and never looks away from Eddie’s face until they fall to the floor.

Then he’s reaching for something Eddie hadn’t noticed—scissors—and he’s going for the hem, of Eddie’s sweatshirt which—

“What—“ Eddie starts, but it hurts too much to flinch away and even if he could manage it: just because he doesn’t understand doesn’t mean he doesn’t trust.

Which should be fucking terrifying, but here they are.

“I can stitch it back together, promise,” Steve’s saying while he uses the blade not to cut but as an ad-hoc seam-ripper, and making a clean job of it from what Eddie can tell, all things considered.

“Steve Harrington, master seamstress?” Eddie chokes out as Steve moves to tear out the stitches nearest the neckline and then peels the top from Eddie’s body, no painful contortion required.

Man’s goddamn full of surprises.

But then Steve leaves Eddie buck naked while he goes into Eddie’s bedroom, comes back in an instant with more towels that Eddie thought they owned, pops two big ones on the sink and hands Eddie a big stack of washcloths while he starts lining the floor with the rest, pooling them carefully around the base of the toilet near Eddie’s feet, his head not dangerously close to Eddie’s not limp dick or anything while he gets to work, Jesus H. fucking Christ.

Then Steve’s grabbing for one of the washcloths and Eddie can safely place the rest of his lap for this goddamn modesty.

Eddie almost topples them to the floor and ends up with negative modesty when a damp cloth brushes his forearm, unannounced and so fucking gentle.

“Too hot?” Steve asks, and Eddie shakes his head. It should be. The water’s been running long enough. But…nothing’s probably hotter than Eddie’s skin right now for how he feels his cheeks burn so.

Relatively speaking it’s fine.

Steve raises a brow, fiddles with the knobs a little and then soaks the cloth, soaps it up and…starts from the top.

And he’s so careful, so gentle, so clinical but soft in the precise way he makes points, little triangles like a puzzle to clean just up to the lines of bandages, never submerging or letting the wet get to the edges, threaten the adhesive, and he’s no one-trick-pony either, because it’s soap then it’s a fresh towel to wipe clean, the whole of him, save for the behind he sits on and the…not attentive dick and its neighboring real estate under the extra cloths.

Steve holds up a finger, asks for a pause while his footsteps rush to the trailer beyond, and come back with a…

Chair from the kitchen.

Then he’s busy covering it with towels before he wordlessly helps Eddie to his feet and leads him to sit, back to the shower.

“Lean back as much as you can,” Steve says, and Eddie has no reason to argue before Steve’s got another towel gathering his greasy-ass hair up and then making a barrier between the limp matted mess and the wooden spindles, and then—

Oh god, oh god, then his hands are in Eddie’s hair, holding it at an angle so the water he’s pouring from somewhere falls into the tub basin until the strands are wet and if Eddie thought that was heavenly, then he’s working the shampoo in and Eddie’s been afraid for a little while that nerve damage would impair…y’know but good goddamn no worries there save for coming all over the fucking towels because Jesus H., the feeling of Steve’s hands in his hair, massaging his scalp, ringing and repeating, combing through the strands with his fingers…

That’s what the word orgasmic means. Every other definition is a lie.

Eddie thinks he’s between floating on the high of the sensation and squeezing his dick to keep from shooting off beneath the washcloths and so he probably misses exactly when the water stops rinsing his hair out, and when Steve’s hands stop touching him save to mop the worst of the soaked ends of his squeaky-clean mop, but when he does blink back to the moment Steve’s frowning, but not, not at Eddie.

More like near Eddie.

“We can’t put it in, but,” and oh, he’s talking about the chair, can’t put a wooden chair into a shower, fair, fair, but then Steve’s eyes are lifting back to Eddie and they look…a little apologetic, but mostly resolute: “if I help, do you think you can,” and he nods at the tub, the mid-height lip of it. Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, for the challenge, but.

But also because there is really just one general area of his body that’s not been…attended to yet for cleaning.

So it’s maybe like a 60-40, 70-30 split on that point. Moment of truth, either way.

“I’ll need a lot of help,” Eddie bites his lip, and he’s not even surprised when Steve meets his trepidation with encouragement.

“I can lift you,” and oh, wow, hey, definitely a safe thing to say to a guy before you’re gonna help him wash his dick. “But do you think you can stand if I help you keep your balance?”

Steve’s obviously got a plan and Eddie obviously just needs to not come on them both on the way to, in, and out of the shower right now so, he figures they should both handle their own separate priorities for the home stretch, here.

“Yeah,” Eddie answers, even though he doesn’t believe it.

He believes in Steve, though, so. Probably that’s enough.

And Steve does lift him, and the towels are still covering his front but Steve doesn’t shy from lifting his ass and wow, okay.

Okay.

“You lean on me, like this,” and of course he’s manhandling Eddie as he runs a quick cloth—soap, then water—over Eddie’s back and then across the curve of his ass, holy mother of—; “and then,” Steve holds another soapy cloth to Eddie and gestures, this time hidden from a full frontal view by propping Eddie against his still-clothed chest:

“Then you can finish up,” Steve says like it’s simple. Maybe it is.

Eddie’s soaped up his pubes and barely dropped the cloth before he reaches for the wet one to rinse but—

Nope. Nope, Steve’s got a cup, maybe what he was using for Eddie’s hair, a crackled novelty one from the Pizza Hut in Muncie, Eddie remembers getting the damn thing; but Steve got that cup angled so he pours directly below Eddie’s lowest dressing, letting him use both hands to work the soap all the way out.

“How,” Eddie starts, kinda marveling that his short and curlies are…distinctly not bubbly.

“Got good aim,” Steve’s smirk is audible behind him, and tangible for how it lifts his chest with a little huff; “basketball and shit.”

“Fuckin’ jock,” Eddie lobs back without any heat at all; shit, if anything, it sounds fond on the outside.

Adoring if you go any deeper.

“Dry off,” and it’s then that Steve hands Eddie the last of the bath linens that had been his little loin cloths before being hauled into the tub; he dries his front as best he can and then tosses the cloth before Steve’s reaching around him with a wider towel, drying him hip-to-thigh, and cupping across his ass. again before loosing the towel to the floor and grabbing around Eddie

“Hold onto me here,” and Eddie’s being hoisted ever-so-gently over the side of the tub and deposited back on the toilet which has a…fresh towel on it for him to sit on. When’d that get there, anyway?

“Okay, now,” and oh, wow, okay, Steve’s kneeling between his legs and when’d he get there, anyway?

“Slip these on, for your modesty,” Steve winks as he works a new pair of boxers up Eddie’s legs, quick and efficient like Eddie hasn’t had a fucking stroke here; “and let’s get you toweled off the rest of the way and into some clean fuckin’ clothes.”

He gets the boxers up as far as the line of his pelvis before it’s unavoidable, and Eddie assumes he’ll try to stretch the waist far again, to keep his hands as far from anything too weird no, nope: Steve sticks with quick and efficient and he gets those fucking underwear up and settled in no time at all.

And he brushes his forearm twice against Eddie’s shaft in the process, and does nothing. Has no reaction. Is…fine.

Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that at all.

Steve does, though, apparently: which is to careful dab the towels where he can’t rub him dry, and do exactly that until Eddie’s got nary a stray droplet left to be soaked up by the unseamripped sweatshirt and clean sweatpants Steve helps him into, before helping him to bed but Eddie shakes his head, nods at the door, toward the living room.

Steve eyes him appraisingly before helping him in that direction and Eddie’s glad he could fake whatever amount of wakefulness was necessary to bypass the bed because the fact of it is he’s bone fucking tired—all the arousal did not help that specific point—but Steve’ll sit next to him on the couch, as a given, where sometimes Steve sits next to his bed instead of next to him in his bed.

And Eddie wants to tip over exhausted against Steve, okay? Because Steve doesn’t seem to fucking mind, so.

They settle, exactly like always, exactly like Eddie expected. And Steve’s arm welcomes his rapid descent along Steve’s ribs, the soft echo of his heartbeat this hallowed, magic thing that just makes Eddie feel warm.

“Thank you,” Eddie says, for this, for the shower, for the way this is the same and also maybe better beyond all probabilities: for everything, really. For Steve, being Steve.

And Eddie’s almost asleep, and it might be the magic warmth of the way he tipped into Steve’s space and the tangle of their bodies for it but the words Eddie hears last before he’s out come from near his scalp, and lips move in his hair and maybe that’s just coincidence, or maybe all probabilities are still being shatters and it’s almost something like a kiss but either way—

Either way, Steve’s voice is so soft and open when he whispers Eddie into sleep with the most perfect word imaginable:

“Always.”

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livwritesstuff · 11 days

Text

Post S4!Eddie Needs a Little Help

Good thing Steve's such an excellent nurse boyfriend? friend, huh?

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

Or: Five Times Eddie Has To Ask For Help, Plus One Time He Doesn’t Need It Anymore (but asks anyway) ✨ for @penny00dreadful 💜

🧊 one: drink 🧊

The first thing he clocks, when he surfaces back to the land of the living: he can’t move his fucking arms.

At first, he thinks he’s locked up, restrained somehow: cuffed, but he can’t even know that, he can’t even check because he can barely fucking move at all, he—

“Eddie,” he hears his name through white noise that’s tunneling his vision, that’s caving in with every blow his pounding heartbeat deals to the walls as they close closer—there’s beeping like a time bomb in the background but it’s not just his name, it’s the voice that speaks it: it cuts through. It bolsters the walls and shelters him from collapse as his eyes dart wild, seeking out the sound.

“Breathe,” plush lips and earnest eyes coax him, and Eddie feels his own eyes widen because: Steve goddamn Harrington.

Here.

“You can breathe, okay,” Steve’s saying and his eyes are bigger now, there’s a pleading in his tone and Eddie sees it happen before any sensation, any feeling comes with it: Steve’s got Eddie’s hand in his, cups it to his chest but never breaks from holding Eddie’s gaze and the first thing Eddie thinks he feels as a touch is the warm pressure of the chest under their joined hands lifting almost-too-strong, almost-too-full.

The things Eddie feels that have nothing to do with his five fucking senses—he’ll work those out later.

“Come on, with me, with me, yeah?” and Steve’s breathing deep and even and forced for it, keeping a punishingly intentional sort of time and Eddie realizes oh, hey, right: he does need to breathe and so the next thing that he feels is the tail-end of pain, sneaking up under a fog that hints at any to come when whatever’s blanketing the feeling gets lifted, taken away, but then Eddie’s zeroing in on Steve’s face again, gasping a little and fuck, but it hurts: but Steve.

Steve’s smiling at him, in a way Eddie doesn’t know he’s ever seen before; definitely never felt before for the way it points a direct hit to his sternum, all fuzzy and sunrise-gold, and he doesn’t know if it helps him or hurts him in trying to breathe, to get the rhythm back to is but it sure as shit kicks at his heart and he thinks that punches his lungs hard enough to do…something, because Steve’s smile just grows, and the warm-gold-glow starts to spread through Eddie as something bigger and brighter and fuller than the pain as Steve exhales once out-of-sync and Eddie feels it, how Steve presses his hand tighter to his chest for it and laughs a little around one single word:

“Yeah,” and then it’s back to deep breaths, carefully measured, and Eddie wants Steve to talk again, but his head’s getting clearer, his lungs remembering how to work right, and he feels things under his hand now where he didn’t before: soft sweater. Rabbit-quick heartbeat.

“Steve,” Eddie chokes it, drags the word across gravel and bleeds it out and he’s disgusted in an instant, horrified by the sound coming out of himbut before he can let the terror and the hurt swallow him, he sees Steve, who somehow found a way to grin broader, shine brighter.

“Hey,” he laughs it out with so much goddamn relief, so much feeling, that Eddie can’t help but melt into it; Steve must feel something in him, or maybe he just knows, because he’s gathering Eddie’s hand, flattening it as a palm against his chest to keep breathing, keep breathing, but then he’s reaching and there’s a gentle whisper of touch against Eddie’s left cheek, and it stings, and he knows he should feel more but it’s…it’s goodeven as it aches and he leans, fuck, he doesn’t think twice before he leans.

“God, it’s good to hear your voice,” Steve says and it’s so warm and honest and it’s fucking laughable because Eddie sounds goddamn abysmal, and his throat tries to push the laughter, even if it’s poorly placed, even if nothing really feels fucking funny about anything but the effort’s like sandpaper on glass, wretched and violent, and Steve’s eyes widen when Eddie flaps at his neck, but he’s already reaching for the side of the bed, and—

“Water?” He asks, holding up a pitcher and a clear plastic cup and Eddie bites his tongue, tries to remember breathing without Steve’s guiding hand and he almost manages as he nods and then tries to reach when Steve places the pitcher, cup in his hand but Eddie’s hand…

He can’t lift it right. His vision’s either totally fucked, or his hand is tremoring hard enough to make him dizzy. He can’t feel anything, again. He—

“Eddie?” Steve’s voice is careful, gentle, but it’s firm: like it knows it’ll find steel to press against when Eddie meets his gaze and makes himself listen: he wants the glass. He can’t…he can’t reach for it, let alone hold it, let alone get the water to his mouth, and not all over everywhere else for the shaking. He doesn’t know if he’d feel the width and weight of the cup, or the wetness of the spill: he’s a mess, he’s broken, he’s totally fucked, what even if this, what is he, is this what it means to have survived, what is wrong with him—

“Look at me.”

Steve’s got that tender-pressed iron in his tone, the command less grating where it would make Eddie seethe—still does, the slightest bit but so far beneath everything else; beneath a sense of being cared for, being held close and then Steve’s hand is reaching for Eddie’s face again, brushing along his cheek and oh.

Oh, tears. He, he was—

“We almost lost you, Eds,” and it’s Steve that sounds choked for it, his voice wet and weeping with it and eyes gleaming just a little too bright and Eddie’s pulse trips to see it: proof that he means something. Proof that the wild things Eddie’d let himself imagine in the past days, in what he was so fucking sure were his last moments at all: they might still be wild, but they might also be things he’ll get to touch just an edge of, a gentle mercy of the corner of the things he spun up in his head.

“We almost lost you,” Steve says it again, and it’s sounds just as gutted, fucking…heartbroken, and for what, for Eddie? He, it’s—

“And you’re on a lot of medications, and you have a lot of injuries, and some of it’s gonna just take time and some of it’s gonna take more work, but Eddie,” Steve tilts his head, leans in and Eddie can feel the body heat of him from the chest on out: “Eddie, we are all here to help you, okay? No questions asked, we’re here to help,” and Steve’s eyes are a piercing kind of starfield, deep-dark but lightened by the fire burning: kinda mesmerizing even before he speaks again:

“Because we love you, all of us love you, and we are so fucking relieved you’re still here,” and there’s no question in it, no hesitation or resistance: it’s wholly felt and believed and Eddie reels a little for it because how and why, and the idea of all of them, and of Steve being included in the all-of-them, and love, of any kind, but love being a word no one fucking uses for a thing that’s small, or weak, or fleeting and just, just…

“And it’s not charity, or obligation, or pity,” and it’s like Steve can read him, can see his soul, the worst endings to the story that had drowned him in an instant when he couldn’t feel his fingers, when he couldn’t grasp a goddamn cup, before he could even stop to consider that he was already in the best possible ending, either way.

Because it was one he was still here to see.

“Kinda the opposite, really,” Steve’s slipping his fingers between Eddie’s atop his sweater; “because it kinda hurts when we’re not here to see you being okay,” and it’s so earnest, so sincere when he says it, when his voice goes low and faint like he doesn’t want to tempt the universe by letting it hear an unthinkable possibility that they’d dodged to by the skin of their teeth, but by the skin on their bones as sacrifice, scars to match and all:

“It hurts to be anywhere but here, where you’re okay, when we were so fucking afraid you wouldn’t be.”

And doesn’t that fucking sear for the slap of it in his face; doesn’t that goddamn sing in his veins that still have blood pumping through them, Jesus H. Christ.

“So,” Steve leans forward, draws Eddie’s touch somehow closer, has to almost be painful when all Eddie can process above the fog and the warmth is the breadth of Steve’s chest, and the thrum of his heartbeat as real-real-real, and there for Eddie to anchor himself in as being real, too.

“Will you let me help?”

Eddie’s eyes dart to where Steve’s placed the cup back on the side table, and has a hand near it waiting: for permission. He’s giving Eddie a choice, and there’s a version of Eddie, in a version of events not so far from these, here, but then so far from these here, that would fight harder at the idea of being coddled, of being invalided and made purposeless, fucking pointless for being wholly ripped of his ability to care for his own needs and wants, but this…

This isn’t that version.

So he nods, and Steve lets out a sigh Eddie can map from inhale to release, and he smiles like it’s a gift to him that Eddie lets him do this, lets him lift the lip of the cup to Eddie’s lips, careful and Eddie can feel it rest on tender flesh, something torn there too like so much else of him, and he drinks like manna from a heaven he doesn’t believe in, save that he thinks there’s something angelic, something godly in the tenderness of Steve’s movements, of his eyes on Eddie, of his heartbeat under Eddie’s touch: just him, there, present.

Like all the idly musings he’d allowed himself in the dark of a hellscape, in the moments he’d thought for sure would be his last: like those fleeting little fantasies may not have legs for themselves, but could grow into something just as good, or better even.

Because maybe they’ll be something true.

“Thank you,” Eddie manages to say, and it’s a whisper but it’s not something out of a horror film, so it’s an improvement after five careful swallows and Steve’s deft hand to wipe his bottom lip.

“Thank you for letting me,” Steve’s foolish enough, perfect enough to say; “it helps me, too.”

How, though? How, and more: how are they here like this, in this moment? Just—

“How’d I get out?” It’s an easier question to ask, so he feints that way instead.

“We carried you out.”

Vague.

“Who did?”

Steve only blinks, but his heart thumps an extra beat against Eddie’s fingertips.

“I did.”

Of course he did. Of course it was him.

“You’re,” Eddie licks his lips, closes his eyes; tries to figure out if he needs more water to keep going: no. No, he can do this.

“You’re okay?” he turns his hand just a slightest bit, doesn’t want to stop touching Steve but wants to press his hand to Steve’s the other way ‘round.

“Bats,” he manages to mouth, and Steve’s got the water to his lips again, now, carefully portioning his sips as he answers:

“Getting there, but I’m fine.”

Eddie wants to roll his eyes. Eddie wants to hold Steve to his chest and check his wounds himself. Eddie wants…

“Everyone else? Dustin?” he follows up because he can guess; Steve wouldn’t be so calm if something terrible had come of the battle, but still. “And—”

“Healing,” Steve’s quick to answer the half-formed questions, knows what Eddie’s concerned with most without trying and maybe it’s obvious, probably yeah it is but it feels warm in him again, through him like honey, thick and slow and sweet. “Max has got a rough road ahead, and it’s touch-and-go, because we’re pretty sure the things that are still wrong with her are tied up in Vecna,” Eddie frowns; regrets it for the pull and why is sensation coming back for hurting; “we didn’t wipe him out entirely, we lost this battle,” but then Steve’s hand is closer against his cheek: he doesn’t know if he leaned in or his Steve moved nearer but it doesn’t matter because Eddie will hurt far more than this, will take feeling for all it’s highs and lows, will claim it back and clutch it close if he also gets to feel Steve.

“But maybe more it’s like a draw, really, because it could have been such a bigger loss,” and Steve’s voice catches, and so does his breath where Eddie’s hand’s still charting; his pulse trips and Eddie frowns deeper, fuck the pain of it and whatever real damage it does above the waves of heavy narcotics, Steve’s eyes have gone glassy and his throat’s working harder around something thick, difficult, and the hand holding Eddie’s to Steve’s chest is rubbing the skin at his wrist near-raw for how hard and how metronomic it’s digging against Eddie’s veins, and his mouth’s parted and he’s staring at Eddie like—

Oh.

Oh, that’s what he meant, about…bigger losses.

Well, shit.

“And there’s still hope, y’know?” Steve’s voice comes quiet in comparison to where it was before but it’s still music. Still beautiful.

Eddie tries to swallow, wet his mouth on his own but he can’t so he turns eyes that can’t possibly look short of pleading, now, and blinks toward the cup at the bedside and Steve’s on it in an instant, easing it to Eddie’s mouth and tipping gently, painstaking in its care until Eddie pulls back and steels himself to try again with words, because these ones, he needs the to come out strong, and right:

“We’ll win the war.”

It’s scratchy, and probably more motion than sound but: it’s there, and it’s full and solid and Steve fucking beams for it:

“Yeah,” Steve speaks it like it’s fact, or like in saying it he’ll seal it as law and Eddie believes it just as sure, too, so:

“Yeah, we will.”

They will. They will.

They sit like that for a while, and Eddie feels the exertion of doing very little at all start to creep up on him and he must shift, or make a sound he can’t quite pick up himself to notice because Steve’s quick to jump:

“What else do you need?”

And Eddie’s drifting, and he doesn’t want to be a bother, a burden—useless—but Steve’s looking at him…the way Steve is looking at him?

It kinda prickles behind Eddie’s eyes, so he closes them, which feels like such a goddamn loss because then he can’t see Steve and he, he just…

“Can you,” Eddie starts to bite his lower lip but the sting rips through at the first hint of pressure so he bites at the tip of his tongue instead, and Steve’s already settling him; he never sat up, not truly, but Steve’s making sure he’s laid flat and comfortable, pillows arranged just so and Eddie can barely manage to pat the mattress when Steve retreats, but Steve knows him for that innocent gesture, too: grabs for his hand and Eddie remembers breathing well enough, now, to sigh in contentless, in fucking relief for the touch.

“Couldn’t feel,” he rasps a little; “hands, arms, when I first,” and then he opens his eyes, and locks gazes with Steve and forgets, for a second; forgets again, about the breathing.

And it’s okay; he’s okay with forgetting.

“Would it,” Eddie struggles with the words, throat start to feel a burn in it for the strain; “okay if—“

“The answer’s yes, man,” Steve’s soothing him, but also kind of shushing him, all in one go: “whatever it is, okay? So just ask, don’t like, pull the punch,” then Steve’s squeezing his hand, and murmuring deep and smooth and almost like a purr, a source of pure comfort just to hear, and then to feel through the air between them:

“‘Cause it’s not a punch, yeah?”

And: okay. Okay then, he can; Eddie can do this.

“Can you keep,” he barely breathes, but it’s all he remembers so he goes with it, hopes it’s enough: “holding? I can feel, when you’re…”

He trails off, but it’s…fine. It’s fine, because Steve never lets go once, just readjusts the hold of his hand on Eddie’s, of Eddie’s inside his, and settles next to him quiet and steadfast and kind of fucking everything and Eddie fades into the feeling of it with the last of his words like a vow:

“I’ll hold it until you wake back up, if you want.”

And if Eddie knows anything as sleep claims him: he knows that he wants.

divider credits here & here

👾 title credit here

💫 ao3 link here

#WHAT #genuinely eating this rn

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