i’ve decided to send an ask for each story you posted in the wip game kdnehdhs who did this to you? lives rent free in my brain 💛💛 (@a-little-unsteddie)
thank you so much 🥰🤍 still slowly working my way through the asks, so have a few more words to make up for the wait 🫶
who did this to you (pt.4) // tales of blue
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | read on ao3
🌷 preceding snippet no 1. | no. 2
Finally, finally, the familiar sound of Wayne‘s old truck rounding the corner into the trailer park interrupts the tense silence that seems to have fallen over all of Forest Hills tonight, and Eddie has half a mind to run out there, run toward them and get the whole story. Just to be sure that everything is fine. Just to be sure that Steve’s still… That he’s still there.
He stays right where he is, though, staring at Buckley‘s wild hair, feeling her shadow walk over him as Wayne pulls up to their driveway and stops. She is right in the centre of the headlights, but still she doesn’t move. Eddie wants to scream at her. Wants to nudge her and shove her out of the way — imagines it, imagines all the alternate universes in which he finds her wide eyes scared and unseeing as Wayne‘s voice sounds behind them, telling them that Steve didn’t make it.
Except in this one, Wayne said they’re coming home. In this one, shit like that doesn’t happen to eighteen year-old boys and their friends.
Aside from that girl. Barbara Holland.
Eddie swallows, his eyes flitting between bright lights to the silhouette of Buckley right in their centre. Like a doe, he thinks. Terrified of what she’ll find.
Don’t you wanna know? Eddie wants to ask her. Don’t you wanna see? What are you afraid of? What did you see? Who is he, Robin, and who are you? Why the fuck won’t you move?
In the end, it is the sound of a car door slamming shut that snaps Buckley out of her stupor, and she all but flies off the steps towards the truck. Towards where Eddie can vaguely make out the shape of a badly bruised face, the play of light and darkness not enough to conceal the deep purple splotches or the sluggishness of his movements as he raises his head. Turning toward Buckley like a flower to the sun.
She presses her hand to the window for a second, just looking at him — and Eddie is glad he can’t see either of their faces. He has a feeling that what he’d see there would haunt him forever.
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life and death (steddie)
this one is inspired by this fanart by lazylittledragon of Steve and Eddie as Life and Death having dinner together at a restaurant good omens style that gave me so many brainworms I immediately went to go write the first half of this. That’s as far as the inspiration goes, though, I took the actual content in a very different direction
Eddie’s no linguist, but he’s pretty sure when people came up with the phrase “Life is a bitch,” this isn't what they meant.
Unfortunately, Life happens to be just that. A massive bitch.
(Perhaps even more unfortunately, he’s also an incredibly attractive one.)
He doesn’t remember being born.
It was at The Beginning Of All Things, so he thinks he can be forgiven for that. Frankly, with all the universes he has to travel daily, it’s a miracle he even remembers yesterday. Nancy would argue that he doesn’t, since yesterday is a useless concept to beings who exist outside of time and space, but what does she know?
He does remember meeting Life, though.
He’d looked him up and down, or as much as one could when they were simply a vague concept with no form or real identity yet. Eddie (who was not yet Eddie) had eyed him back just as warily.
“So,” Life said, “you’re the other guy?”
“Looks like.”
“Hmm.” He gave him a single dismissive look, before casting his eyes down on a universe that was still being formed. “Well, try not to fuck up my things too much.” And before Eddie could snap back that he would fuck up whatever he damn well pleased, he was gone.
It had set a precedent.
“Hello,” Eddie says, kneeling in front of a young woman. Too young, far too young for this, but that's the way it goes. “What’s your name?”
She blinks at him silently. Around them, doctors rush around, shouting instructions that get more frantic by the minute. They ignore his presence in the center of the room.
Finally, the woman licks her lips. “Cass,” she says. “My name is Cass.”
“Well, hello Cass.” He smiles comfortingly. “Do you know who I am?”
“Should I?”
“You tell me.” He straightens up and holds out a hand. After a moment's hesitation, she takes it. The doctors get even louder, but it doesn’t matter. A long, singular beep is lost among the chaos.
She stumbles for a moment when she stands, but he holds her steady. She gasps when she turns around.
“Ah, he says, “you’re getting it now.”
“So this is it then?” She asks, staring down at her own body in the hospital bed.
“In a way,” he shrugs. “Your life as you know it is over, but there’s more to see.”
“Like Heaven?”
“Not quite. Think of it as…another round on the carousel.”
“Rebirth?”
“There you go.” He squeezes her hand encouragingly. “Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”
“I don’t know. Will it suck?”
“I don’t know,” he echoes. “You’ll have to tell me when we see each other again.”
She looks at him appraisingly. “You’re Death, then.”
He lets go of her hand to sweep into a bow. “At your service, my lady.”
“You know, I always assumed you’d be more of a dick.”
“People always do.”
“You’re still wearing black though.”
“What, you don’t think it suits me?” He grins when she laughs. It’s true, though. He thinks black looks a lot better on him than the other colors he’s worn.
They chat a bit more. He’s always eager to know about the lives he takes, about the experiences and the jobs and the dreams they had. It makes him a bit sad, but he’s been doing this since before this earth was a speck of atoms and dust. He’s had a long time to come to terms with his job.
Besides, it’s not like it’s really the end. He’ll see her again, be it under a new name and new life. She’s excited about it too, even if she’s a tad bit wary. He understands that.
“Wait,” she says, as they’re finally getting ready to go. “My baby. Will she be okay?”
Eddie looks up, and meets the eyes of one of the nurses. He’s in perfunctory yellow scrubs, hazel eyes peering over his mask. He raises an expectant eyebrow at Eddie before his attention goes back to the baby in his arms. A silent demand to move along.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, watching him, “she’ll be just fine.”
“Is the baby going to be okay?” Eddie asks, depositing a small, glowing marble into a tall vase filled with them.
“Which baby?”
He frowns, even though it’s a fair question. There are a million babies he could be asking about. He gestures to the marble on top of the pile, a little too sarcastic even for him.
“Ah, Cassandra Revis, age 32.” Steve picks up the soul, turning it consideringly in his hands. “I talked to her partner. She’ll be missed.” His eyes glow the same gold color as the marbles, and he says, “The baby’s name is Delilah. She lives a good life. You’ll collect her when she’s 78.”
Eddie nods. 78 is a good, long number for humans. One that doesn’t make his technically-nonexistent heart hurt.
“Why couldn’t you do that yourself?”
“Oh, I could,” he answers cheerfully. “I just wanted to make you do it.”
He doesn’t say he can only see when they’re taken, not what kind of life they live. Steve already knows.
Every so often, they fuck.
It’s not a thing, unless you count the multiple instances where it has absolutely crossed the threshold from lapse of judgment to this is something that will happen again. It shouldn’t have even happened the first time, let alone the times after it. Or the times in the future, but Eddie tries not to think about that.
In his defense, having sex with mortals kills them. Where else is he supposed to get his rocks off? There’s only a select few Beings he would fuck. Robin would rather die, Chrissy is nice, but usually a little too sweet for him. Nancy is always good, but not always what he’s looking for. And Jonathan and Argyle are fine, but they’re really too into each other to pay much attention to him. He loves being the center of attention. Thrives off it, even. And Steve, for all his faults, is excellent at pretending to have complete and utter focus on his partners. As if there’s not billions of different versions of them across this universe alone at that exact point, collecting and giving. As if the only thing that matters is them alone together.
So, yeah. They fuck, and he’s not ashamed of it. He enjoys it, in fact! He’s not too proud to say that. Just…never where Steve can hear and get that stupidly sexy smug look on his face. The one that makes Eddie want to punch him. As if either of them can be harmed.
The thing they don’t talk about. The thing Eddie avoids thinking about. One day, he’ll take them all. Dustin, Max, Lucas, El, Will, Mike, Erica. Nancy, Jonathan, Argyle, Robin, Chrissy. Steve. One by one, he’s going to have to collect them all, and then he’ll be alone in an empty universe. However short that time is, it terrifies him. He’s never been alone before.
Steve will be the last to go. Maybe that’s why he can’t tear himself away.
(“Is it weird that I’m kind of looking forward to it?” Steve asked once, quietly. They’d been naked, curled together in Steve’s bed. Or, more accurately, the bed Steve conjured for this purpose. His room was bright, in an unnatural way that reminded Eddie of a star. Not that it mattered. If they wanted to sleep all they had to do was close their eyes and will it.
“Looking forward to what?” Eddie asked. “Round four?”
He can feel the eye roll across dimensions. “Dying, numbskull. It’s basically the only thing I haven’t experienced. We know when it’s gonna happen, how it’ll happen, but everything after that is just…blank to me. I can’t see the next Creation.”
His throat feels tight. “That eager to get rid of me?”
“As if you’re not gonna be right there when we meet again,” he huffs. It’s true. Steve comes first, because you can’t have Death without Life. And at the end of Everything, once he’s taken Life, it’ll be the catalyst for a new Beginning. They know all the steps. It’s been ingrained into their very existence since they began.
But they won’t remember this. They’ll be different iterations of themselves. No memories, no knowledge of what happened in the universe before. Just copies with the instructions downloaded into their brains.
He’s been spending too much time on Earth.
“It won’t be the same.”
That makes Steve pause. “No,” he acknowledges quietly. “It won’t be the same.”
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NSFW (so feel free to delete without answering)
It's really easy to notice the weird characterization in fandom when I read smut fics. Because fandom has this homophobic view that sex position preference has anything to do with personality and looks.
The bottom is usually portrayed as delicate, feminine, weak, and an unstable mess that sobs if anyone looks at them sideways (hello misogyny!)
And the top is usually portrayed as commanding, tough, physically strong, robust (which is why Eddie are usually given magical muscles that appears with no exercise or physical labour).
And it's so silly! You can be the burliest, most mean looking bear of a man, and enjoy bottoming, or a shy little twink and absolutely loathe it. Looks and personality has nothing to do with it, and I don't get why fandom seems to think it does.
And it's not a Steddie exclusive problem either, I remember someone having an absolute meltdown in the Stonathan tag, because people dared to write Jonathan as a top. When according to them he clearly was a delicate flower, a sweet and caring guy, so he had to bottom, and it was wrong to write otherwise. And Steve, as a "mean jock", had to top😂
I'll admit I pretty exclusively read Steve as a bottom, because for me to enjoy reading about someone's butt, I need to find them hot🤷♀️ But the weird characterization in most of these fics is really testing my patience.
(I don't write smut myself, and I usually wouldn't complain about something I don't personally do anything to change, but this is not one author's preference, it's a huge chunk of the fandom, which makes it more fair to complain about, I feel)
I just want to read a confident Steve, who is still physically fit and a bit of a bitch, who is the same height as his partner (or taller in the case of Stonathan), and who just happens to enjoy bottoming. No personality changes needed😭
How can that be such a rare find?
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would steve ever insist that eddie comes to basketball games with him just so they have an excuse to get those good seats right at the court that famous people and celebrities usually get?
Eddie is not Steve’s go-to person if he wants basketball tickets.
He goes to Lucas because every doctor knows a doctor that knows someone with season tickets they never use. And also, Steve kinda wants to go to the game with someone who, you know, will actually enjoy being there.
Eddie’s undying hatred of all things sports is, well…undying.
But Steve’s been a Pacers’ fan since the first time his dad shoved a basketball in his hands and taught him how to shoot. He has watched them lose in the playoffs every year that they make it to it, but he’s convinced. 2014 was going to be different.
He just can’t get tickets. He spent all day trying to buy them online and failed, and all the resale tickets are for seats that suck or way over his paygrade. Him and Eddie pay for their own hobbies out of their separate bank accounts, and Steve can’t afford the absolutely ridiculous price that’s being asked so…
“Please?” Steve asked, big puppy eyes and adorable little pout. He knew what he was doing and so did Eddie. “Pretty please? I never ask you for anything, Ed…Okay, fine, except for all the stuff I ask you for, but this is different. It’s a small price to pay to see my team win.”
“Your team that has literally never won in the history of all time?”
“How many championships does Leg-less the loser elf have?” Steve asked.
“…It’s Legolas,” Eddie said. “And he was a part of the fellowship that kinda saved the world.”
“So was I,” Steve pointed out. “And I deserve this.”
Steve didn’t ask for courtside seats. He didn’t ask to be sat among the rich and famous. Hell, he didn’t even ask Eddie to go with him. He just wanted to see if Eddie had a connection that could get him a ticket for a seat that wasn’t in the nosebleeds.
Steve doesn’t really believe that the tickets Eddie showed him are real until they are sitting in their seats – their seats that are courtside and five feet away from Paul George warming up. Steve is so excited to be there that he pretty much misses Eddie shaking someone’s hand right in front of him until he’s nudged in the shoulder, “Babe, you know, Sandy, right?”
“Yeah, totally,” Steve says absently, sparing a glance in the direction Eddie was gesturing before looking back out at the court. It takes him a second for his brain to register who he was just looking at and then, “Holy shit, you’re Sandra Bullock.”
She is just as beautiful and as nice as Steve has always thought she was, and she’s amused by him which makes Steve blush. She holds out her hand to him, “And you are…”
“I’m…” Steve trails off, only picking back up his train of thought when Eddie laughs loudly beside him. “Steve. I’m Steve. Uh, Harrington. Eddie’s – I’m – we’re together, by law.”
“We’re married,” Eddie grinned, throwing his arm over Steve’s shoulder, and wiggling his wedding ring at her. “Still working on how to tell people, obviously.”
She congratulates them and talks to them a bit about the game (bring Steve out of his starstruck stupor), and even buys them champagne as a late little wedding gift. It’s a blast.
Eddie spends half the game flinching every time the ball bounces a little too close or a player nearly ends up in their lap, but Steve is loving all of it. The other half of the time, Eddie is having Steve explain what’s going on and who the players are, or he’s talking to the guy next to him.
It’s some square jawed model type that Steve doesn’t recognize and also, doesn’t like. He’s a little too friendly with his husband, especially when he curled a piece of Eddie’s hair around his finger. When the two of them end up on the kiss cam together, Eddie doesn’t even get a chance to register it before Steve pulls him nearly out of the camera frame and kisses him.
Later, fans will make jokes about the pictures of that night because it’s very clear that Steve and Eddie switched seats.
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