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hitlikehammers · 1 month

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You Have Bewitched Me, Body and Soul

or: The Secret Life of Daydreans 🦋

A Pride and Prejudice AU based on this scene for @pearynice on her birthday 💙🎉

He walks the heath to clear his mind, or so he tells himself. He knows in the heart of him that he walks, here, so as to muddy his trousers, to feel close to this man, this man who is so fond of walking, this man who holds him, who keeps him—who wants nothing of him and for fair reasons.

And yet.

This evening and the morning hours before dawn saw fit to peak above the tall grass: it’s proven mortifying, Wayne’s brazen notions, to attend the Hopper-Byers home, to call upon Steven in the night—Eddie may forget himself, but to call unannounced, to impose upon Mister Hopper, to impress upon him even the notion of disrespect when—

And yet then further still: such actions have served now to lead him to this, to this—

Such brashness and its consequences, from Wayne’s mouth upon waking, it has done nothing save to usher Eddie to heights of foolishness he’s never touched before; did not dream existed.

These precious hours have taught Eddie to hope, a dangerous thing to the mortal heart in his chest, weak to fluttering whims of impossible notions.

And yet.

There is light now, caressing the heather, limning the blossoms copper, so much like his eyes but so lesser, such paltry imitations. Nature, despite her majesty, could never hope to compare; Eddie prefers to imagine it does not try.

It must know what has been born of it, more radiant than anything it knows for itself. More resplendent than the sun itself.

And it is the sun itself, that reveals true radiance; Eddie is unsure of its truth but only for an instant. He blinks against the trick of light, in case it plays upon the weakness, the fluttering in his blood, the hope in him, but—

Nature cannot compare to the specimen himself; Eddie’s own mind cannot conjure the wholeness of him.

And this, this:

And to behold him across the moors in the slow-breaking rays of day: subtle, coy, glimmering but ever-gentle, as if in deference to his nature cast in this moment so delicate, lips parted as if his lungs conduct the breeze that calls the grasses to dance—to behold him: it is not songs but hymns, then: greater held here in the golden tendril-strands of being itself, more dear and true in these moments than Solomon’s Song in its every measure and metre—more sacred to a sweeter god.

He is a vision, and come daybreak proper not even the dew underfoot could hope to glisten in such measure as to rival his radiance, and if Eddie’s feet move him unconsidered yet conscious in the soul of him, beckoned in his blood and bones—if Eddie takes the strides between them and crosses the expanse to where Steven stands, to where Steven watches, those parted lips nearer now, more plush and sweet like fruit on the vine; those copper eyes more amber at proximity, molten in motion, dancing even as the beloved lines of that face, that face appraise him with just a tilt of consideration, perhaps curiosity. It is not impassive but it is inscrutable, and Eddie’s heart takes pains to fill with all his blood, to pound hard until he’s dizzy with it—though less so than he is with the dancing starshine in that gaze.

His cause for hope.

“I couldn’t sleep,” and oh, oh, but such seraphic tones bathed in sunlight just so, like banked fires behind Eddie’s bounding heart, like the pulses can ride the flames as much as be driven by them: immaculate.

Then the words themselves, the notion: it could ring as a justification, an excuse for being out in these early hours as if Steven Harrington in his glory could ever require justification, something so gauche and pedestrian as an excuse for being when his being is a gift, and then so far beyond such—it could sound defensive, or as an explanation, but no: no, Steven sets it into the space between them like an offering, simple yet simultaneously reminiscent of the beauteous layers of the man himself, his glorious enigma stood before Eddie like dream made flesh: he couldn’t sleep.

“Nor I,” Eddie grasps for that offering, pulls it tight to his chest; “my uncle,” and by all that is good and merciful in the world: if there is hope, if there is an inkling even, to be had only to be dashed but to at least have been known as potential alone, then let his uncle not have offended the patriarch of Steven’s family. Wayne is a kind soul, and a good man, but his humor is acquired to a fault and if he may have—

“Peculiar affinity for porcelain in that dear man,” and Steven, bless him, exalt him, canonize him and damn him straight to hell so long as Eddie may follow and they may be warm and outrageously contented there so as to keep forever the perfect quirk of his lips, like as laughter from the chest but quiet and still, the giddy dance of it all inside the waltzing wonder of his eyes—any and all things, whatever is necessary Eddie will do with effervescent joy, only to keep it on that heavensent face:

“He may have brought me a vase, and promised a tea service in due course.”

And Eddie had toyed with the notion that he couldn’t possibly flush deeper, perhaps in those stray moments he’d spent blissfully distracted by Steven’s amusement, Steven’s sweet lips, and not the likelihood of Wayne’s quirky ways of making a point and this, this, he—

Porcelain.

Only a long-held tradition in his family so entrenched none recall the origin, merely the absolute intent: a token of wedded blessing, or a gift of betrothal. Nothing dramatic or profound in the slightest, of course.

And Wayne chides him for being over-bold.

“Wholly inappropriate,” Eddie coughs into his hand, tries to mask the red in his cheeks with the gesture; “certainly without your, without,” and Eddie casts his eyes to the now-soft lit meadows, seeks counsel and finds none, to say nothing of the pull of Steven before him, nerves pushing his eyes to at least attempt to shy, to defer from Steven’s haze but as so as their eyes meet, it is wholly for nought.

Eddie breathes in deep, tries to steady himself, tries to focus less on the galloping of his heart between his lungs as they expand and more on the faint scent of honeysuckle when none grows here, when the perfume must be of Steven, must be the sweet lure of him for himself alone.

“However can I begin to make amends for such forwardness, uncalled and,” he falters, because the question is heartfelt, the sentiment honest in him but the formality is comfortable familiarity; the root of his worry, the fear that tethers this hope to the ground beneath him, clips its wings: “and undesired?”

For how could it ever be; it wasn’t, and quite rightly so, conveyed definitively in spring last when Steven had met Mister Carver, and Eddie had soured at the reminder of that rake’s transgressions, had let it propel pure jealousy into something fiercer, that made him forget his tongue and speak of himself as some high prize with no thought to the fact that the Hopper-Byers household lived on inferior means in part by choice, their family a taboo of the region but mostly, to a glance, a happy one: the patriarch a veteran of foreign battles and the Missus a force and a household managed by both with all heads covered safe came nightfall and all bellies filled without pain of wanting and no care for which of the children shared their blood if all shared their love.

And Eddie was, he was…

To call him a fool is too lenient, far too forgiving.

He’d spoken low of them even if only in passing, but he believes it was worse for it, for being impudent, thoughtless, and about inferiority of all arrogant nonsense, as if his money outstripped the goodness of those people, of Stev—

Oh, and he couldn’t have stopped there in his imbecility. Even if Eddie hadn’t known quite how Steven’s beloved sister held his heart; even if Eddie had acted for honest reasons to protect his oldest and dearest friend, despite the concern in it no greater than blind hypocrisy, how could he, how could he in defense of his friend not witness the same awkward tendency to babble in the face of feeling—regardless of any and all of it, what he’d done was done callously, and to have seen it crush Steven, the chasm that had opened in the moments Eddie had owned to his deeds—it had only been rivaled for how hateful it settled in him inside the wrath that had emerged to fill that chasm, the disdain, the loathing aimed at Eddie alone when Eddie had thought, when he’d asked, because he wanted so ardently—

He is grateful only that he told no lie in it. Did not try to save himself in falsehoods. The pain, he knows, was never something he could have been spared.

Same as he knows, now, that his feelings in April were sentiments he thought insurmountable. And yet the stirrings in his breast then were but a faint breeze compared to the whirlwind that consumes him now, his heart riotous and rejoicing without even being granted permission, without reciprocation, even before he knew the first lilt of hope.

And now, now that there is hope—

“Considering the lack of pure ruin well deserved yet unsuffered by my fool of a brother,” Steven eyes him knowingly; Eddie had asked Michael not to disclose his hand in shoring up the transgressions made in connection to Mister Carver in the city, but Steven quirks a brow with pointed intent and a warmth, a softness that is offered in something like companionship, like camaraderie, like a confidence shared; “to say nothing of the fortuitous appearance of one Lady Cunningham in our humble sitting room just last morning,” and Steven’s smile, then—and Eddie knows, because he drilled Chrissy through fumbling attempts so very many times, he knows she’d been and he knows it had borne sweet fruit for her affections—but to see Steven smile at him for it, if only in some part, is further still a gift in its own self: “I suspect we both have more than mended our share of transgressions.”

It is more than Eddie could ask for, an even footing steadier in this moment than he could have wished to reach.

And yet.

“You must know,” and Eddie can hear his own heart in his words, in his voice undeniable, inescapable—only rational, for the words passing the thumping in his throat on their way past his lips by necessity: “surely, you must know, it was all for you.”

Steven’s gaze on him is unyielding for a few silent moments, long with only birdsong in the periphery and Eddie’s frenzied heartbeat at the fore: a panopticon than feels all-knowing as it takes him in. Eddie feels wretchedly exposed for it, giddy for the attention in it, and flustered for its sheer intensity all at once.

“I did not wish to make assumptions,” Steven finally speaks, and the words are more exhalation than voice but it lands as poetry woven through a song of him, all of him, as clear as he breathes the music sewn in sonnets; “though to hear it now, from your lips,” Steven’s mouth quirks, and oh, but the apples of those regal cheekbones, their sharpness a threat to man’s sanity—he blushes so sweet.

“But in the measure of mending transgressions, then,” then Steven bites the swell of his bottom lip every so slightly, rewrites the staves of Eddie’s pulse for the indentations as he shakes his head, then lifts his lashes, gilded in remorse; “I fear I’ve—“

“Hush, sweetness, please,” and oh, Eddie has learned well from his uncle to presume, indeed; to be brazen, to speak without a rein on his heart just in this moment, to call him dear sugared things and he almost regrets, almost retreats or seeks apologies but oh, oh but those amber-pooling eyes: they start to drown so dark, the middle-black flooding for more than a pulsebeat but less a moment and—that pesky foolish hope, and Eddie takes not one step, but two steps closer for its pull.

“Anything you have said and done has been more than merited,” and Eddie feels certain in this moment that he must own it in not uncertain terms, even if it risks the heart in his chest; “I was a,” he licks his lips, casts his eyes down in shame, for it because he cannot do otherwise but then he looks up again, pleading in his gaze he knows because once more:

He cannot do otherwise.

“A proper fiend,” and it is true, it is true and he remembers confessing one of his own cardinal sins, his unforgiving tendencies when his opinion of others is sullied and he should not hold so much optimism for the man before him being so deeply entrenched as something different, something better but Eddie has changed himself, for this singular person’s presence in his world; he cannot help but lift his transgressions and pray better than he’s ever managed in a pew for mercies greater than any scripture could serve to the fate of his soul:

“I presumed blindly, and let pride blind my eyes to what stood before me so clear,” he breathes, and it is that, it is a prayerful thing he speaks, and no less.

“And what might have proven such a spectacle?” Steven asks and there’s levity in it, brightness but then underneath: a truth believed, a certainty in doubt. That such a spectacle would be unfathomable, rather than commonplace and a foundational truth among all things.

“The heart of you,” Eddie murmurs without hesitation, reaches toward Steven’s chest on instinct but hesitates before he touches, before he feels more than the suggestion of his heat in the morning chill—Eddie does not have the privilege.

Yet. And he…he still…

“The man you are, truly good beyond all reason or compare,” Eddie murmurs, marvels—he doesn’t touch, but he doesn’t yet withdraw his hand, pull any further away because—

He hopes.

“Beautiful for the flesh of you only as a paltry reflection of the soul in you,” Eddie speaks it so low, pitched close to the earth and deep in his chest because it demands no less, no less, and he wants to touch, he wants to cup Steven’s cheek, he’s wants so deeply to trace those lips in revere and feel him, show his love the best he can, with the remit of action he is allowed for now as a bare echo of what he could, if he’s allowed, if he is granted the joy, the honor of holding this man and reverencing him and adoring not like some idol, no, but as the part of his own heart that conducts all the beating, that makes any living truly worthwhile at all.

Because the value and weight of measuring living has shifted in this new world, with Steven in his view.

“And you, my,” no, no, Steven is not his, not yet, but he can respect what has not come to pass while still lavishing Steven with the ardor full to his heart:

“You, Steven Harrington, are breathtaking,” and now he does presume, the over-boldness his uncle has tried to tame in him but he reaches, and tucks Steven’s soft swoop of hair behind the delicate shell of an ear, and his hand never so much as brushes skin, and Eddie is quick, of ever so gentle in it, so that his fingers have retreated by the time he notices, but: Steven leans for the touch.

Steven leans for his touch.

”And if you are breathtaking,” Eddie lets his eyes roam across Steven’s figure, and he is a marvel, truly, but Eddie’s gaze lingers on the mud-splatters at his hem, stretched over strong calves and it would be impossible not to soften, not to melt within for the bright glow that spreads through Eddie’s chest as he smiles gentle, trusting in the promise of that emanating light as he breathes:

“Imagine what such truths must speak greater truth still, of your soul.”

Steven blinks, and those lashes fan so full: Eddie swears he feels the world around him shift for it, some a divine kind of a blessing.

“You spin such poetry as to treat toward nonsense, good sir,” Steven sighs the words a little over-soft, so gentle, a demure sort of lilt, to poke at him with a familiarity, a casual comfort Eddie aches for; aches for what else it could accompany, could mean.

“You speak with kindness,” Eddie cannot help but to voice the yearning, and his tone does nothing to belie the earnestness of his heart for it; “with lightness to your tone,” he reaches, dares to smooth Steven’s hair once more, slower with the touch to test if he leans again and oh—oh.

Steven cants his chin ever so slightly, and lets his jawline press to Eddie’s hand: more touch of his skin than Eddie has ever known before. He gasps for it, not only slightly undone.

“It tempts me so,” Eddie thinks he breathes; knows it is a shaking thing, much like the thunder of his pulse.

“Tempts you?” Steven leans back, lips pursed to confusion, and Eddie mourns the loss with his blood and bones entire.

“To hope,” because what more can Eddie do now but name it, this feeling beating wings through his veins, propelling his blood as much as his shivering his breath, narrowing his vision but making the whole of being brighter, more flooded full with color?

“To hope as I’d scarcely allowed myself,” his oversaturated wanting bubble forth from him, tongue loose and lungs oddly tight; “as I’d feared never again to know.”

And how he’d feared, he’d feared so deeply that all chance was gone, all hope was lost, that his presumption in the rain that Sunday morning had lost him all possible chance at the happiness his heart understood sooner than his mind, that when he’d leapt without that understanding through and through he’d put fire to the bridge he ever wished to cross.

But: he is here. Now, he is here.

They are here. And Eddie thinks he knows where to leap, his mind seeing the path as his heart trembles for how big the hop has been coaxed into swelling.

“You are too generous to trifle with me,” Eddie swallows hard, tries to even his breath but to no avail; and no matter, not truly: “so I must ask it of you, pure honesty, with no thought to spare my heart for it,” his voice doesn’t crack so much as fade a little, and he prays it does not undercut his sincerity but then Steven moves, reaches.

Tucks Eddie’s curls behind his ear soft, quick as Eddie’d done in reverse but it soothes something in him, doesn’t quieten his pulse but draws enough anxiousness from the drumming for there to be room for wishing, for hoping.

“I swear it,” Steven tells him solemn if soft, and the way he draws his hand away so slow: it feels like a statement of its own.

Eddie sees the path all the more clearly for it, and leaps with the whole of him, now:

“If your feelings have not changed, if your wishes stand firm as they did,” Eddie preludes, needs Steven to know, and to feel no obligation to him, nor guilt in speaking true: “tell me so and I will bother you no longer, this last of my presumptions my final transgression against your kind nature.”

“I swore it, Edward,” Steven speaks with a steel determination, not in kindly but wholly unwavering; “and not lightly done,” and his eyes shine ever-so, as steel in a forge burnt fire-bright.

“I will not lie to spare the heart of you,” Steven promises, then breathes deep with clear resolve; “but neither will I see it handled without due care, no matter your question, no matter its answer.”

And indeed, heart of Eddie is not spared. Because Steven, Steven is being honorable and speaking in vows in ways that tap furious and wantonly around Eddie’s chest but then: he speaks of caring for Eddie’s heart without precedent save for his generous inclinations as a rule—this rings different, though.

And Eddie’s unspared heart—a quandary to be sure, as the point to hand is to hold the very same with care—but his heart is not spared a frenetic pounding that Eddie feels high in his throat, a feathered thing beating to be free.

When his lips part, perhaps he grant’s its wish:

“If,” Eddie starts, breathless at first and understandably so; “if by some kindness I have neither earned nor deserved, your feelings havechanged,” Eddie feels himself on an unexpected precipice, for Steven gazed upon him with…with tenderness. With so much more he has not earned or deserved and yet:

“Then I would have to tell you,” and it’s Eddie’s racing heart giving itself away as not merely frantic but full, so full, and if it takes flight now it can’t help but spill its splendored hopes at the feet of its desire, its best excuse to beat:

“You have bewitched me, body and soul and I love, I love, I,” his breath catches, the revelation of letting the words spill again from his lips now terrifying, for how last they were received but his heart and mind understand it fully, now, and he can speak it with a fullness he didn’t comprehend then, a wholeness he hadn’t tapped to know, then.

And thus so much more than anything: it is exhilarating, to open his heart and hope to be seen truly for all he is, for all that he feels and seeks to give without reservation or reliant: unending.

“I love you.”

And when he breathes, after the world holds those words, when he breathes the air tastes golden, rich and born anew. He makes to speak, to confess further but then—

Steven reaches for his hand, takes it fully in a way Eddie’s never felt before, laces their fingers and stares at them before lifting his eyes to Eddie’s, glistening and stretched so wide. Eddie barely blinks to drink in the whole of him, and when he catches glimpse of the blood-beat at the stretch of Steven’s star-charted throat, the swift rhythm a perfect swell between beauty marks, it swathes something in Eddie that had retained rough edges somehow, smoothes him into whole submission to the way his heart hums for this man’s mere touch.

When Steven pulls Eddie’s hand joined in his own, to press against the source of that perfect beat, and Eddie knows by touch now the way it pounds with the same gusto, the same fluttering testing Eddie’s own ribs: it is magical. It is divinity itself writ in flesh and held between mortal hands.

“I never wish to be parted from you from this day on,” Steven whispers, fierce with it, and Eddie wishes he could move, just now, to bring Steven’s hand close to his chest in turn, to let him feel the tripping slip of beats as it acclimated to a world where, just perhaps, Eddie may have just gotten everything he’s ever wanted.

In point of fact, though: he cannot quite move, because it so happens that cupping a hand against the heart you’ve yearned for so long is momentous to the point of stilling time itself.

But Steven, of course: he proves Eddie’s trust in him, Eddie’s faith and hope, as he does the moving for the both, and draws Eddie’s hand upward, reaches for his other wrist and gathers them together between both his own and lifts them to his lips, kisses fingertips, the peaks of his knuckles, the curve of his wrists.

“Your hands are cold,” Steven breathes, glances up at Eddie and Eddie cannot know what he sees but hopes—since it has not failed him yet—that what he finds is the heart and soul of him for the taking, the sharing, the giving for any and all that’s wanted and received.

Steven’s mouth is only parted the slightest bit but it sends Eddie’s pulse to tripping all the more, but Steven’s eyes are dancing, his inhalations deep but quick, affected as Eddie when he cradles both Eddie’s hands now back to his chest, flattens them to the palm against to feel every beat and breath like a confession or a promise or both of them and more and then—

Then he leans, slow, and Eddie understands this impossible thing: an invitation as much as a query for permission. Steven’s lips are still parted when he pauses a hair's-breadth from meeting and Eddie falls, somehow, although he thought he’d fallen already farther than a man could manage.

But Steven’s pulse under his hand skips, stumbles hard but feels as jubilant as Eddie’s own, so he finds a way to fall further, just the slightest tip forward into that parted pout and Steven; Steven.

Against Eddie’s lips, his kiss is like sunlight.

Against Eddie’s hands, his heart is so warm.

🦋

also on ao3

🤍permanent tag list (lmk if you’d like to be added/removed): @pearynice @hbyrde36 (again: thank you so much for the beta/wrangling my bad brain™ into its cage) @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson @estrellami-1 @bookworm0690 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme