this is ridiculously late but belated happy birthday, mackie! (@stevethehairington) everything you do is golden and being able to call you a friend is an honor. here’s some cheesy fluff for my friend. ily. 💛
“Where’s this one from?” Featherlight warmth spreads through Steve’s core. Eddie’s finger touches his taut skin, a memory weaved in between blood and skin.
Steve presses against the touch, “That one is from when Billy Hargrove broke a plate in my head.”
Eddie’s mouth gapes open, blinking at him in disbelief, “What now?”
Steve laughs, pressing his head at the blade of Eddie’s shoulders. He basks at the heat, like a kid in a summer field, remnants of passion and magic still in the air.
“Have I never told you that story?” Steve says, muffled as he presses kisses into Eddie’s shoulders, skin and scars making up his person.
“No?!” Eddie yelps, pushing him away gently, his face slacked with confusion and concern, “Does this look like the reaction of someone who knew that Billy fucking Hargrove broke a plate on your head?”
Steve smiles, pressing his thumb against Eddie’s forehead and smoothing the furrow away, “Well, I told you that story, right? Our second time with the Upside Down. It was around that time, when Billy attacked Lucas and we got into a fight.”
“Oh.” Eddie sighs, “I really don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But— Billy.” Eddie makes a face of disgust and cringe, that makes Steve laugh.
“Let me do one.” Steve urges on, making Eddie smile and nod.
There is something so magical with the way Eddie maps out Steve. Some nights, they stay up way past making love to learn every bit of skin. Steve never understood why, no one really stayed long enough to learn the stories burrowed in his skin.
Eddie says— like a person from an actual fucking fairy tale— that Steve is a map, a map of constellations and stories, all formed from years of journey and life. If anything, Eddie says, he’s very happy that he’s the first one to do it, to discover it, to write stories about it. Steve isn’t the best explorer, but he does his best to do the same for Eddie.
Steve lets his finger dance on skin, weaving through stories he hasn’t learned yet. He wishes— hopes— that his touch is just as gentle and as warm as Eddie’s and that it brings him the same comfort his touch does for Steve.
Steve pauses on a scar too small under his jaw, barely visible now that it’s been swallowed whole by bursts of scars from where the bats gnawed at him.
“How about this one?”
Eddie smiles, brown eyes lighting up with recognition, “Oh. You found that one, huh?” Steve hums.
“Well, that one I got from dancing on stairs. I was holding a fire truck, and I slipped and fell down the stairs. My mom said I was very smart and I was trying to brace for my fall, but the fire truck got me instead.”
Steve caresses the scar, like it’s still healing and bleeding in his hands, like the same way he did some months ago, when he found Eddie bleeding to his— almost— death.
“Did you need stitches?” Steve whispers, scared that it might’ve hurt for a younger version of his Eddie.
Eddie chuckles, smoothing over his hair and leaving a kiss on his crown, kissing away the worries, “Nope. Just bled a lot, but it did stop. Left a scar though. Had so much worse since then.”
Steve nods, pursing his lips into a smile, as his hands explore against bursts of red painted on Eddie’s skin. It’s the biggest most prominent scar, the ones they’ve barely talked about since they started exploring.
“Well, that one, I am not ready to talk about yet,” Eddie says, his hands shaking as it makes contact with Steve’s scar, directly mirroring his scar, “But one thing is for sure, it’s pretty fucking metal that we have matching scars.”
Steve chokes out a laugh, batting his hands away, “One day, when you’re ready to talk about it, it’ll be a story of survival and bravery.”
Eddie doesn’t speak, but he does pull him closer, forehead against Steve’s. That’s okay, if Eddie doesn’t believe it right now. He will, someday. Because that’s what healing is, bleeding and healing and living to tell the story.
It’s okay, because Steve will be there, until stories wrinkle and fold. To explore every scar and bump and listen to his stories as Eddie writes stories about bright stars engraved on his skin.
For now, he finds another one.
Steve smiles and says, “How about this one?”
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Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."
Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.
These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!
Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!
Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.
So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.
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2b nier automata is literally the funniest protagonist of all time because since her design is so sexualized tons of people flooded to the game to look at big anime ass only for her in the very first second of gameplay, before you've even seen the characters, go "why are we here. just to suffer? god, im so fucking sad"
then because nier automata sold so well, due to it being fucking fantastic and the aforementioned anime ass, every gacha under the sun went "oh shit can we have collab with 2b please please please" and yoko taro (i assume) was like "yeah sure" so now she's in like 20 games surrounded by anime thotties going "uwaaah i really hope commander-san notices how short my skirt is!" and she's in the background going
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