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POV: when you overhear your boyfriend’s bandmates who ⛔️do not like you⛔️ talking to him—about YOU

“Be real though, Ed. Harrington? You can’t actually be serious, here.” Steve doesn’t like to eavesdrop, like, on principle. Which is to say he totally does it. He just doesn’t wholly approve of it, or think it’s a very good habit to have, while still doing it. “You got me,” Eddie sighs, longer and deeper than can be taken wholly seriously. “I’m running my longest successful con to date.”

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-s4, established relationship, corroded coffin, as in: the gang’s all here and being VERY JUDGEMENTAL of eddie’s taste in men, and maybe steve had to pick eddie up from practice today so he overhears it WHOLLY WITHOUT INTENDING TO OKAY?, no one ever REALLY want to hear what the people they love really think of them when said people don’t know who all’s actually listening, true love, declarations of feelings, it’s actually really fucking hard to stand up to your friends, happy ending♥️

for @steddielovemonth day ten: "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." —Dr. Seuss

also! Unnamed Freak is Doug for the purpose of this fic because the book can fuck itself I say so 🖤

“Be real though, Ed,” the voice that filters through, and holds Steve’s hand from pushing the car door shut loud enough to notice, is fairly reasonable, like trying to talk down a suggestion absurd enough to send someone to the ER—which means, of the subjects at hand? It’s gotta be Jeff.

“You can’t actually be serious, here.”

Steve doesn’t like to eavesdrop, like, on principle.

Which is to say he totally does it.

He just doesn’t wholly approve of it, or think it’s a very good habit to have, while still doing it.

“You got me,” Eddie deadpans, but it’s like, venom-laced. It stings just to hear and Steve’s struck with how much his life’s changed since Spring Break, and more still since…well.

Since Eddie.

Because Steve is well aware the man can cut glass with how sharp his tongue can get, they did go to high school together whether they ran in the same circles or not.

It’s just strikes Steve in the moment that not once since Vecna, has Eddie turns that tongue on him.

Now, other uses of his tongue—

“I’m running my longest successful con to date. Yep, totally pulled it over on all you bitches,” and where it could be playful, every single word is sharpened to stab, to pierce, to drag the wound out so it bleeds, like a shiv to remind someone where they fucked up, in perpetuity.

“Please applaud.”

And oh, even Steve flinches at that tone, and he’s not even the target. Hell, he’s still in the driveway—he doesn’t make a rule of crashing band practice, no matter whose parents’ garage they’re using; Eddie’s van is just regularly in the shop for one thing or another, so he’s gotta come get his man. But he doesn’t, like, push his way in. Sometimes doesn’t even get out of the driver’s seat. He knows Eddie would more than welcome him; has the handful of times he’s ventured to step in to apologize for interrupting but remind him they have to pick up the shitheads. But one: Eddie is alone in his welcome, and like, the polar opposite of the other three guys, who range from staring daggers at Steve to sneering so scrunched up to the nose that it’d give Carol Perkins at her snittiest a run for her money.

And Steve wouldn’t have made it this far if he didn’t know how to recognise where he’s not wanted, and learn how to make the calculated decision of whether to walk or push his way in. And much as he loves Eddie? Steve actually wants his friends to eventually come around from probably, like, muttering ancestral curses under their breaths at him or something.

Plus, from what Steve understands? Jam sessions are personal. Sacred. Eddie had blushes and stammered the first time he let Steve listen in on works in progress; and Steve had rewarded him for the gift of it liberally and with genuine gusto. It’s earned him repeat performances on the regular, but Steve gets it’s a private thing in general. And these guys don’t know him, don’t presently care to—don’t trust him.

He figures it’s like…masturbating in front of someone. The art thing, the depth of making music and stuff. Showing your soul a little bit, losing control for the betterment of the final product.

Now, he and Eddie definitely have masturbated together, it’s actually fantastic foreplay, or even just a deliciously sloppy go on its own. But that’s neither here nor there. And also totally fucking different.

Steve really doesn’t want Eddie masturbating in front of anyone other than him, ever again. Steve’s sure as shit not looking to on his end; definitely not with the other members of Corroded fucking Coffin.

The metaphor might have gotten away from him. But you get the picture.

“No, man,” and that’s, that’s Gareth’s voice, Steve’s almost sure. Sharper. Concerned but also caustic on the undertow. “It’s just,” he snorts, the disbelieving sort: “this can’t be real.”

Okay, yeah. Tone plus actual words add up.

“Yeah, just,” Doug laughs a little nervous, like of all of them, Eddie’s verbal attack had the most weight in tempering his response of the three of them; “blink twice if you’re being held against your will.”

They all chuckle, but it’s toned down the whole way around—even Steve can clock that. These guys are boisterous when left to their devices, Steve’s taken note of that. Mostly watching from the sidelines—almost exclusively when they don’t know he’s there to watch.

Again: does not condone eavesdropping.

Does not try at all to refrain from doing it.

“I mean, you don’t expect us to believe you’re actually fucking him,” and oh, yeah, okay: Steve was pretty sure he was the topic conversation here, and despite some of the setbacks of recent years, he’s not insecure when it comes to relationships especially.

He’s definitely the only one fucking Eddie. And Eddie’s the only one fucking him.

And while he doesn’t really hold it against these guys for being wary of him—he wasn’t really a perpetrator of their high school woes, but he definitely didn’t do anything to make them less…woeful—so he’s mostly bummed about it for Eddie’s sake, and on principle, but like, seriously.

Doubting Steve successfully scoring Eddie Munson? Like, Eddie’s a catch, Steve of ll people is well aware, but. Steve’s also been long past fishing the shallow end of the pond, y’know?

Give him some credit.

💅That One Time Mommy Harrington Came Home Early and Found Her Son In Bed with A Man and Had To Square With The Reality of Her Baby Boy Growing Into a Man+Building His Own Family (Without Her)

and/or Being a Better Man of the House Than His Father Ever Could Be

🌼OR: 2/5 times Steve/Eddie talk to anyone but each other about their feelings (for each other), +1 (other time they turn around and talk to one another)

She’s slipped her heels off by the time he stands in the entryway to the kitchen.

“Mom.”

Diane Harrington is not the type of woman to be caught back-footed in conversation. And she does suppose that lasting two decades without ever catching her son in flagrante is better than most mothers can hope for. She was admittedly unexpected—their arrival wouldn’t have been until next week if all had gone to plan. Richard’s secretary—not the young woman Diane caught him with last night, shockingly enough—but the secretary always sends Steve certified letters to make sure he’s aware they’re returning to Hawkins.

So she was unexpected. And she’d heard noises, crying out, when she’d cautiously entered after her flights were delayed past nightfall—there’d been a very suspicious and unfamiliar van in her garage where she’d expected Steve’s BMW to be parked, he’d always cared so diligently for that car but it was in the drive, and had shoe-prints on the dashboard she could see through the window. That, added to foreign articles of clothing strewn like evidence of a tussle, a hard-worn leather jacket and a pair of jeans darker than anything she’d ever seen her son so much as glance at, then the baseball bat dropped, perhaps, near the front door when no one in this house had ever played—though Steve had wanted to, as a boy, but swim will get you noticed for college, Steven, Richard had always insisted—it had all sent her chasing the noises up the stairs to Steve’s room, throwing her shoulders back and forgetting that she had no implement for defense as she opened the door and heard—

Well. Heard more clearly the words accompanying the cacophony of noises, paired with the image of her son on top of another man, the two of them very much notcovered by the sheets nearly kicked clear off the mattress.

They’d frozen when they saw her—and she’d frozen in kind upon seeing them, processing in slow-motion how her son was not in fact in mortal peril, or battling an intruder.

Not…even close.

But when the boy below him had looked up and met her eyes, she’d seen absolute terror, and then her legs had remembered how to move, and she’d dashed back to the stairs with a gasp, heels clacking on each step of her mad descent.

She’d checked for wine like an instinct—none in the kitchen, and she didn’t want to go to the cellar in the basement. She honestly didn’t know if her legs would give out on her for the climb, given the way the adrenaline was leaving her swiftly, with just the shock left to drop her into a chair at the kitchen table.

And she’d stared into the middle distance with little anomalies catching her attention through a sort of syrup, through a daze: snacks Steve never gravitated toward before, but even without accounting for shifting tastes, the sheer volume is confusing.

Pizza boxes waiting to be broken down for the garbage—but likewise, far too many—a party, maybe, but then why was the house not still in full swing?

The entire wall behind the countertops snaking about the room: lined with empty bottles of Yoo-hoo of all things, like modern art, some kind of statement.

The unmistakable marks of girls in the house: hair ties and neon scrunchies wrapped at random about the room. Bottles of nail polish by the little basket meant for keys. A young girl’s lunchbox, open in the corner, sitting at an odd angle on its hinge. Like it’s out to be fixed.

The fact that the dining room table is bigger, but farther—and instead this mostly-for-show kitchen table’s been stretched to its maximum length, exceeding both the dining room’s capacity and also the space made for this one, here, with all the long-abandoned leaves added in, and chairs surrounding it from anywhere and everywhere, hardly any matching. Scuffs in the wood mostly buffed but some a lost cause. Like it’s been lived on.

Then the refrigerator, that’s never once had anything hanging on it, practically plastered now in its entirety with…Polaroids. Drawings, some maps, maybe. To-do lists, only a handful for groceries from what can be read. Colorful letter magnets, as if for a toddler. School exams with varying marks but also varying levels of difficulty—different grades, perhaps? A calendar, with so many notes. Like life was busy enough, here, that each and every day was filled to the brim.

It’s not…she doesn’t understand—

It’s in the empty blinking, the confusion, that Steve calls to her. She regrets that that’s exactly the same gaze she turns on him, at first.

It’s nothing to do with him. She just…she’s been absent too much and too long, she knows. But when her child calls for her, her first move is to look.

It always will be.

“We didn’t expect you back yet.”

🎸That One Time Gareth Had To Square With The Reality of Eddie with Steve Harrington and/or Gareth Being Kind of a Dick Without Just Cause

🤘OR: 1/5 times Steve/Eddie talk to anyone but each other about their feelings (for each other), +1 (other time they turn around and talk to one another)

“These aren’t in Jeff’s range, man.”

Eddie’s been bowed over a notebook for hours now, co-opting the bed in Gareth’s room while the actual fucking owner of the room gets relegated to the desk chair. As soon as Eddie’d been miraculously saved and recovered enough to get out of the hospital, and then out of his new house—first time Gareth had him over, he’d offered the bed without question, propped up his still-recovering friend and got a genuine attempt at a smile through the still constant pain as he’d basically walled Eddie in with pillows. Mostly out of concern; but not empty of guilt.

But those days are thankfully behind them now and if Gareth needed anybadditional proof that Eddie was more than back to himself?

It’s that he still sprawls wide over Gareth’s bedspread, just like the throne in the drama room—entitled, and comfortable with it, despite how the way he folds himself over his books is, just, painfullooking,

“Hmm?” Eddie’s still distracted, but he at least looks up from his campaign notebook when Gareth shakes his lyrics notebook loud enough to make a rustley noise at a pitch that’s hard to ignore.

“They aren’t in your range, either. Which one of us are you planning to have try and hit this?” Gareth taps the top line of scribbled notes across the ruled pages; “and embarrass the fuck out of ourselves for it, Jesus,” he mutters, because: seriously.

None of them can hold this pitch. Any of these—they might be able to convince Grant to try for the laugh because he reads the worst of the four of them, but he’s not so sheet-music-illiterate that the entertainment frankly wouldn’t last long enough to really be worth it.

Gareth doesn’t exactly process that he hasn’t gotten any kind of response at all to his bitching—which, if he’d been paying attention, would have been his first clue; but he doesn’t process the absence of Eddie’s retort because he’s finally pairing the notes to the words scribbled on the page opposite them.

“Dude,” Gareth taps more insistently at the only-just-legible letters—unfortunately for Gareth, he reads Eddie-scratch well.

“These the lyrics that go with it?”

He still doesn’t get an answer, but he…he doesn’t really need one.

Because he’s clear that the lyrics go with the staffs. And the lyrics are…

The lyrics are clearly all about one King Steve Harrington.

The One Where Wayne Munson KNOWS BETTER Than to Lend Air to IDLE GOSSIP

(and does it anyway on accident and ends up thinking his 💕boy's boy💕 might be ✖️stepping out) ——(1/3)

Wayne Munson’s lived his life mostly free from the hubbub of small town gossip. Some was unavoidable in his tiny holler as a boy; more was part and parcel to the service, and plain keeping half-sane in war—anything for a distraction. After all that though, Wayne’d had more’n his fill of even a teaspoon of hearsay, and compared to where he came from? Hawkins, Indiana was small potatoes for keepin’ his nose clear out of it.

Which is all to say he don’t mean to collect any of the latest scuttlebutt on his way just to town after he gets off his shift with the sun barely a glimmer, just past 5 for Leah’s to be open for a better cup-o-joe than the sludge he gets on the floor. All he wants is a hot nightcap because he knows damn well his boy didn’t pick up more grounds before Melvald’s closed last night, and Wayne doesn’t want to see his bed until he’s had a full mug of fair-to-middling coffee.

And honest: he don’t think that’s more than he’s earned to ask.

But it is more than he bargained for signing’ up to, when he sees the only other people in the diner at this hour on a Saturday.

Because the only other people are a girl he don’t know, though he can’t see her real well from the back, which only really means he sees her coffee date full-on and much too well in exchange because they’re leaned in and they’re being all touchy across the table, voices low but not too low—he don’t think they even noticed him come in, let alone come to wait close enough to hear ‘em while he insists on saving the lovely Leah herself the trip to a table when he can damn well carry his own drink, thanks kindly.

“You’re gonna have a coronary if you keep hiding this.”

The girl sounds…she sounds the way Wayne remembers his Mamaw sounding when she was about to hit his Grampy up the head over some harebrained such-and-such. Exasperated, but all from a deep well of unshakable loving.

Which is what perks up Wayne’s attention, and then churns his insides quick right-next, because—

Well. The boy this young lady’s being all over-fond at for his antics is Steve Harrington.

Who, for all that Wayne understands, is meant to be his boy’s boy.

“No, no,” Steve’s shaking his head, tone bowstring-taut; “I’m gonna tell him.” Kid sounds resolved for all of half-a-second before he’s groaning, running hands over his face: “Or, I mean—”

The thunk of the boy’s head to the tabletop clatters the cutlery, and if Wayne weren’t already clued into their conversation, he’d be wholly absolved for dropping eaves given how the noise echoes through the mostly-empty establishment bar-to-door.

“Dingus,” the girl says, and it drips with concern, with affection, with a deep choler that, again, sings loud of married-couple.

Which twists Wayne’s guts all the more to hear.

Because she’s talking to Wayne’s boy’s boy.

(not your average) seven minutes ⏰ ♥️

or: what if Steve had been ‘playfully’ locked into a room by his drunken not-friends at that infamous Halloween party in 1984, for 💕Seven Minutes in Heaven💞!

…and no one realized Eddie Munson was already hiding inside 🫥

Steve just wants to get the fuck out of this place, this party, this fucking…bullshit life he’s found himself in. He’s not at his best, under-fucking-standadably, so when the drunk-ass Halloween masses push and shove and giggle as they lock him in an upstairs bedroom for—oh god, Seven Minutes In Heaven, what are they, goddamn twelve—he’s going to fucking scream, he— “Not quite what you were expecting behind Door Number One?” Steve spins, a little jump in it when he looks for the source of the voice which sounds familiar and then also, not, because Steve thinks he should know a voice like that, because it’s a good voice, a really good voice, it’s not too deep but it’s smooth and it’s— It’s a good voice, basically. And when he finds its owner, shadowed by the curtains in the corner, well. The leather jacket would’ve given him away if the mess of frizzy curls weren’t kind of an automatic tell: Eddie the Freak. Half-hidden as he flips a clear antique of a lighter too fucking close to the gauzy drapes and it…it does something. To Steve. It does something to Steve.

rating: t ♥️ tags: s2 era, alternate meeting, that ONE HALLOWEEN PARTY (you know which one), steve meets eddie immediately after nancy does her drunken bullshit thing, seven minutes in heaven meets truth or dare, (weirdly more effective than you’d think), first kiss(es), fluff, humor, boys being boys, climbing out of windows (like a ninja🥷), getting together (?) ♥️

again: originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo forever ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because it’s going to have a sequel show up soon for @steddielovemonth—which I thank profusely for giving me the kick in the ass required to revisit and actually try to finish this series!

“Oh my fucking god.”

Steve honestly doesn’t know if he’s going to start crying or throwing up quicker, like which one’s closest to the surface; keeping his balance as the shock, the jagged parts that draw blood when your heart gets crushed to shards leaving him susceptible—pathetic, fucking pathetic— to the pushing and pulling and grabbing of the throngs of trashed partygoers shoving him away from the front door, pushing harder every time he tripped up the stairs, laughing and yelling and chanting and fuck, fuck he doesn’t need this, he doesn’t want this, and he doesn’t even know what the fuck it is, just that it’s not his car, and then his house, and then his bed where he can…let it all come crashing down and not have a fucking audience, just: goddamn.

As soon as a door’s thrown open and she’s shoved to stumble hard, catch his nails to bending, bleeding against the light switch as the lock clicks behind him—well fuck.

He gets it now.

Fuck.

“Not what you were expecting behind Door Number One?”

Steve spins, a little jump in it when he looks for the source of the voice which is familiar and then, not, because Steve thinks he should know a voice like that, because it’s a good voice, a really good voice, it’s not too deep but it’s smooth and it’s—

It’s a good voice, basically.

And when he finds its owner, shadowed by the curtains in the corner, well. The leather jacket would’ve given him away if the mess of frizzy curls weren’t kind of an automatic tell: Eddie the Freak, half-hidden as he flips a clear antique of a lighter too fucking close to the gauzy drapes but…it does something.

It does something Steve doesn’t want to dwell on, the kind of thing he’s kinda been working really hard and doing pretty fucking well and not dwelling on but then…maybe like, any other night, any other hour of any other night? Steve maybe would have turned, and at least tried to force the door open; maybe he’d have pushed it down like he’s been getting real good at, almost to the point where he doesn’t even have to think about it, the thing itself or the pushing it down: in fact he’s absolutely sure he’d have done just that. Any other night. After any other fucking night.

But it’s all bullshit anyway, so like, why even bother, what does any of it even matter, Barb’s dead, blood’s on his hands apparently for a pool he doesn’t even fucking pay for, his love’s fucking nothing and the voice from the corner, hell, even the jawline the flame’s casting sharp every other second, every flip open then stealing away with every flip closed: that’s something and so, like.

Any other night. It’d be different.

But it’s this night.

“I wasn’t expecting any door except the one on the front driver’s side of my goddamn car, man,” Steve sighs and throws his weight against a dresser—plain. Really plain—kid’s room. Not too young. Boy’s room. Little brother of…fuck, Steve can’t even remember whose house they’re in.

“I can see where this would definitely count as,” Munson’s tongue runs almost contemplatively over his lips as he tips his head; “a deviation from the plan.”

Steve snorts; he means it to sound amused, because he is that. Honestly he is.

But it sounds like it get halfway there, before it nosedives a little into a half-stifled sob.

Goddamnit.

“You okay, Harrington?”

Oh. So not only is he recognizable, he’s also recognizably not fucking okay.

That’s just great.

“My girlfriend says I’m bullshit,” Steve has no fucking idea what makes him just say it, to basically a stranger at that, and fuck, no, not a stranger: this stranger, who Steve knows enough of but who Steve’s pretty sure knows too many things about him for comfort, just—he doesn’t know what makes him say it. “That loving her is bullshit.”

Actually: probably that’s it. Bullshit, versus something. Munson’s eyes stay fixed on him the whole time, even as he keeps flicking the lighter.

“Does,” Munson starts, and in his good-voice, he sounds almost, like, hesitant. Which isn’t a way Steve really associates with the guy, if he associates anything with him at all but apparently yeah, he does, because he’s absolutely certain this shit’s out of the norm: “like, not to be a dick, seriously,” yeah, yeah: this is like a gentle voice. Careful. Care…caring?

And, like…why?

“But does that mean she’s still your girlfriend?”

Oh. Pity might be why. That’s fun.

“Shit,” Steve rubs his hands over his face, fucks his hair up even more than it’s been which is possibly not even possible. “Probably not.”

Munson lets out a breath that’s almost a whistle, and looks genuinely regretful—again, why, most of the people he hangs out with would probably celebrate Steve’s suffering, so like, what the fuck—

“That sucks man,” Munson says, honest, like, really honest as he para down his…surprisingly tight jeans until he extracts a pre-roll from the front picked and holds it out in offering: “on the house.”

Steve needs that shit bad enough for it to be maybe the only thing he doesn’t question in all of this.

“Thanks,” he says as Munson holds out a light and Steve leans in; the guy smells of party sweat and too many bodies, of Kate autumn air and cheap cologne. He smells…

It’s a good smell. It matches his good voice.

“You wanna?” Steve offers on impulse after he takes a lungful and maybe a little more, maybe a little too much—greedy, needy, bullshit—and holds it back to Eddie as he breathes out slow, tries to keep it all in as long as he can but not…not in a pushing-it-down kind of way. More a making-the-most kind of way.

“Do you wanna?” Munson asks, eyes so wide, like a baby animal or something. Like a cartoon character. Steve just keeps holding the joint out to him, close enough that his lips will touch Steve’s fingers if he wants them to, and in Steve’s head he feels like he’ll call him Eddie, in his head, if his mouth brushes his skin.

It does.

Eddie it is, then.

Rockstar!Eddie Leaves What He Had With Steve Behind in Hawkins 💔 to Chase His Dreams 🎸

(so why is it that he’s back in Steve’s bed Hawkins every couple months for ‘very pressing reasons’ that are straining Steve’s heart honestly anything but? 🫤❤️‍🩹🥺)

NOTE: this was originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo AGES ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because something for the @steddielovemonth is going to be posted soon that is a standalone in its universe, but also very much a sequel to it ♥️

Steve really does try not to think about it in terms of…time.

Maybe that’s foolish. It’s mostly denial. Lots of it isn’t reliable anyway: the score his body keeps isn’t accurate, war-time left over from too many near-misses with a fucking alternate dimension but the popping in his joints and the ringing in his ears and the white hair he pulled out of his scalp and stared blankly at in the sink for a good twenty minutes: those are real things, but they don’t chart the passage of days, of hours, months and fucking years with any real meaning.

It’s been four years. Roughly. Depending on what the start point is. Whether it’s that Spring Break. Whether it’s the first winter. Or the spring after, when Robin begged him to go with her—there’s still time. She still begs, because they still talk given the thread inside them stays tied unbreakable to one another, oblivious to miles between. Maybe it’s measuring from the graduations, the kids—only Erica’s left at Hawkins High, now, though Steve gets calls from the whole bunch of them, Eleven the most, which was maybe surprising, then it’s a good split between Dustin and Will, another surprise. Max calls enough but her calls are calls, with a weight most of the others lack. Lucas’s calls aren’t super frequent but always long, mostly because he talks around the point forever, whatever the point happens to be. Even Mike usually ends up on the other end of the line once a month. It’s…that could be where the time starts from.

Or it could be the summer, that first summer. The one that taught Steve what it was to have a heart just to fucking break it.

Could be that. Impossible to say.

(It’s been 3 years, 7 months, and 14 days. Steve had only counted in retrospect, in the wreckage left behind, because while he’d known there was a deadline in it, to it all, he’d thought he could be enough. That he could change a mind. He’d thought…

Foolish things. Bullshit. Didn’t matter. Could be any fucking date.)

But since the point's come up, and it’s front of Steve’s mind, his least favorite (most favorite) place to find it: he hadn’t expected it. Robin liked to say she saw the signs but. Steve hadn’t watched it happen in slow motion because there wasn’t a single goddamn slow thing about it. Which was…for whatever it was worth, Steve knew falling fast and hard and with everything he was had maybe failed him every time, thus far, but at least he knows that for him?

That means it’s real. He’s all in. He might not be met equal on the other side of the equation—hadn’t been yet, maybe wouldn’t be ever, but he wasn’t having any luck trying to fucking change that fact so, learning to work with what he had was the best he could do. And he had love. He’d never been able to name it to himself so far: not before, and certainly never since. But.

Figuring out the sexuality thing had been a not-bathroom-but-definitely-floor talk on the shitty Family Video carpet sometime around November of ‘85. Slow days, idle comments, and Robin’s suspiciously-but-reliably-gentle-when-the-need-was-dire hand to his shoulder to say no, no: actually wanting to kiss people of any gender wasn’t really…the default Steve had always expected it had to be. How could anyone look at, say, Harrison Ford and not think, oh yeah, I would at least suck his face?

Turned out probably at least half the people on the planet. As in the straight guys and the lesbians. Steve had spent the majority of three days on that disgusting fucking carpet, open to close, popping up to ask Robin if she was sure because what about—

She was sure. And eventually, through a couple of needs for deep breathing and a handful of assurances that it was okay to cry—he appreciated that, but he kept the crying to his room after these long-ass shifts and if Robin stayed for some of those times, that was because she was half his head, half his heart, and she knew what he was going to do sometimes before he did.

They did end up on the floor of his bathroom, a clean one for once, at one point. Maybe because they both held to tradition. Maybe because Steve had largely come to terms with the mindfuck of yet another piece of his world, his self unravelling and rewriting itself, and thought the vodka in his dad’s liquor cabinet was a good way to celebrate. The label was entirely in Russian and Robin had been practicing on hers, said she was pretty sure it was the good shit.

Sometimes you can drink enough of the best shit on an empty stomach, though, and still spew the whole of it up.

Steve sometimes does think he drinks his dad’s best liquor that way on purpose, though. Delightful going down and yeah, it sucks to chuck it up but. The idea that it’s ultimately wasted feels…right.

Anyway: Steve had settled with it all by New Year's, and while he’d hosted the rugrats who could only blabber about their latest campaign with their epic DM, and he’d kissed Robin when the clock turned, well. It felt like a new start, a fresh page.

Something that had the chance at being a good thing.

And nothing much happened in the two-and-a-half-months that followed save for finally catching a glimpse of the D&D god who ran their little club while he was idling in his car to pick up the shitheads, this legendary DM who did not make Steve jealous one tiny bit and who was cool and was edgy and was so fuckin’ cool, Steve, did we tell you got cool he is?! and Steve had said language as monotone as he could before he squinted as out came all the metal and the ink and he’d said your club president dude is Eddie goddamn Munson and he should have kept his mouth shut because the amount of talking that ensued left him with a headache the size of Montana; but.

That was really all that happened until about…mid-March.

Then Spring Break happened.

It could be argued Eddie and Steve grew close enough to pass the acquaintances benchmark, ended up as at least tentative friends on top of necessary battle mates as early as the Upside Down. Whatever reason Eddie gave, he jumped in after Steve. Whatever speech Steve landed on, he didn’t want Dustin orEddie hurt.

It could be argued Steve wasn’t paying attention and didn’t stop in time and landed in the land of Tentative Friends You Wouldn’t Mind Added Benefits With after the…at least after the way Eddie leaned in close and his lips we so red and he called Steve big boy and…

Yeah.

When Steve carries what may or may not be Eddie’s still fucking corpse out of the Upside Down—he can’t tell, every time he tries to check again his own heart's too loud, his own breaths too shaky—but by then, they’re family. Bound in blood. Steve would die for him, like the others. He won’t let him die, if he can fucking help it.

Between him and Max, Steve almost crashes, breaks. Steve’s there when Max’s fingers twitch and he laughs with tears in his eyes and hands over hands and tells her he loves her and he’s sorry and he’s there, tries to talk around the letter he opened and resealed without evidence because Steve knows some tricks too, okay, and her words had broken him but now he could live up to what she thought she was leaving behind, could make sure she had every goddamn thing she thought she was giving up in spades, to roll around in in abundance. He was going to take care of her, whatever she needed. Whatever it took.

Her lips had quirked and the doctors called coincidence, don’t get your hopes up but; Steve knew Max. That was all her.

And there were more tears, he let her fucking feel them; he fucking hoped she’d notice, and remember, and give him so much shit.

Eddie takes longer, pulls out of the woods enough to exhale a few days later, and the way Steve slips out to find the hospital chapel, the only goddamn place he won’t be found by anyone he knows, and bawls his goddamn eyes out?

It’s family, and it’s love because it’s family but…it’s been so quick. It’s been intense, and that probably speeds it along but…

Shit. Shit.

That’s when Steve knows he sets a new goddamn record for himself and falls hard and heavy and stupidin, like, a week and change. Jesus Christ.

It’s in the recovery that they build something though. Something that’s not trauma or terror or the threat of imminent death. Steve spends most of his hours between two hospital rooms listening to progress reports and taking notes and the kids gravitate toward Max—Dustin would have been the outlier but Steve knows he’s not ready, and so he gives his own updates just to his brother when he drives him home after visiting hours—but that means Steve’s Eddie’s most common conversation partner. They talk about bullshit. Steve defends a-ha to the last breath he has. Eddie’s rendered speechless for a second and then frantic when challenged to pick his favorite band. Again when it’s his favorite song, from his favorite band. And again when it’s his favorite song of any song, ever at all. Steve's heart swells in the watching. He’s foolish enough to bask in the glittering of Eddie’s eyes when Steve indulges in talking, scene by scene as guided by the master in the bed beside him, about what his opinions on Star Wars really were. And then guided by no one, just invited to share what his opinions are on the last movie he saw and loved: which was Weird Science, the last movie he watched in a theatre because he and Robin had gone to face their fear or some shit after Starcourt and it was easier than he’d expected. Eddie listens, and nods, and asks if they can rent it when he’s out, before making sure to add but you should really have a new choice like, eight months later, man, you work at a video store.

Steve was mostly just focused on Eddie more than implying, of his own volition, that he wanted to have a movie night.

Eddie’s released before Max, largely for mobility reasons, so they both go to visit her now. Robin’s put on the night shift when they schedule their movie night and Steve immediately moves to reschedule but she says no, she’s seen it, make Eddie suffer this time. So it’s just them.

They sit closer than they have to, on the couch.

And it’s little things that build from there. Max’s physical therapy is a government secret, like some fancy space-age protocol that has real hopes to put her on her feet again so she needs a ride, and while they could take turns, Steve and Eddie just take turns as to which vehicle they hop into to drive her. They stay when she needs them—not when she asks because she’s Max and she never asks—but it ends up three days a week back and forth and during: together.

And a lot of nights, for a movie or a smoke or a nightmare or a pulled stitch before they’re all taken out: together.

And shifts where Steve doesn’t even bother to bring his own lunch because Eddie Munson, unpredictable and wholly forgetful super-super senior—who Nancy and Hopper and most of all Joyce convinced the School would be finishing his final senior year at home save for tests, and only that once he was cleared by his doctors—that Eddie Munson brought Steve something every single time he worked. A burger, a chili dog, chicken fucking nuggets. A PB&J clearly homemade and cut diagonal.

So yeah. It starts out how it does when Steve’s in trouble. But it builds like…Steve’s never known before.

They kiss in May. Maybe so that it’s not their first, and a total cliche, when Steve kisses him for graduation behind the bleachers.

The sleep together after graduation, high on the thrill of it, and that’s maybe a cliche but Steve could not give a shit less.

And then they're EddieandSteve, only to find out they have been for a while; and this is just something a little deeper, a little bit more.

In ways that mean everything.

Looking back, Steve knows Eddie never minced words about his plan to leave Hawkins in the fall. With a mixtape and a prayer if I have to, Stevie-boy, he’d said once even, and Steve had laughed.

He’d fucking laughed.

So he’d known.

But July bleeds into August and Steve…Steve’s in love, okay, for real in a way that he’s never felt before. Right in a way he’s never felt before. He kinda just…overlooks it. Because Eddie seems to be at least on the same wavelength. Touches him first, reaches for him first: wants him. Looks at him with not just desire or attraction but…something no one’s ever looked at Steve with before.

And so he hopes. More than hopes.

But when Eddie starts packing, Steve can’t breathe.

He buys a set of luggage and goes home to start the same, has half of his not-excessive possessions shoved in when he realizes:

He’s not invited. Eddie’s never asked him to come.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #future fic #post s5 #angst with a happy ending #miscommunication #romance #tenderness #fluff #rock star eddie munson #steve harrington stays in hawkins #fuck buddy #but does it count if you’re exes and your still friends and you do it all the time?#like it can’t even be reunion sex because one party is always finding and excuse to come back #and it can’t even be make-up sex because they didn’t FIGHT they just…were DONE #chasing your dreams #(and recognizing when those dreams sometimes change)#yes eddie walked away from a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love #(he had his reasons I promise)#yes he makes detours to hawkins almost confusingly often for a successful musician 🤨#(YES he ends up in steve’s bed every time)#happy ending #stranger things #eddie munson bingo #hitlikehammers v words #hitlikehammers writes

steddie ✨soulmarks✨ except that they spell out your soulmate’s last words 💔

(‘make him pay’ = epically lame iteration of this heartbreaking phenomenon)

From the minute he learned about soulmates as a kid, Steve knew not only that he wanted one—of course he did—but that he was absolutely going to get one. Didn’t matter that they were rare as hell, didn’t matter that every year fewer matches were reported: nope. Steve Harrington had a soulmate, and he was going to find them. When he eventually found out the tragedy of it all, the reason people were celebrating fewer instances of soulmates finding one another, Steve’s feelings on the matter didn’t change. At all. The words that appear to signal your match being the last words they’re meant to speak, before they die? Fuck that.

rating: m ♥️ tags: mid-s4 final battle, canon divergence, eddie says the soulmate words on steve’s skin that double as his last words, steve is having absolutely none of that, canon fix-it, romance, steve stays with eddie to prevent his untimely demise, dustin henderson: surprisingly good with molotov cocktails, happy ending ♥️

for @steddielovemonth day twenty five: “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.” ― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

Steve hears it, nods even and makes to step away—he hears it, but like, it takes a second to sink in.

But once it’s all sunk in, saturated in his cells, his bones?

“Change of plans,” he calls out, and gives a total of no shits if anyone has an objections.

“Henderson.”

Dustin perks up; he might have been playing tough about rolling his eyes over not being a hero but he’s predictable—he likes being important enough to get singled out.

“You think you can hit a target with a flaming bottle while a vine, or a tail, might be trying to strangle you?”

Steve wouldn’t have even had to look to know Dustin’s up for it—suspicion, confusion, those too of course but at least not outright resistance because, again.

Predictable.

He does look at Dustin anyway, though.

Mainly because he knows he won’t find such easy acceptance in any of the other faces gathered around, but like…

Here’s the thing.

When he eventually found out the tragedy of it all, the reason people were celebrating fewer instances of soulmates finding one another, Steve’s feelings on the matter didn’t change. At all.

The words that appear to signal your match being the last words they’re meant to speak, before they die?

Fuck that.

They said you got the words the year it’d happen, first day. No sense of when, just before the year was over. So, like, it was super simple. Steve would just find them, protect them, make sure they say something else as soon as possible to negate the…the curse of it, save them, and then ride into the sunset. Easy.

And actually, he thought it was pretty fucking stupid that people really bought into the whole thing being, like, a guaranteed recipe for heartbreak. If even Steve could figure out how to navigate the rules that easily.

By high school, he learns that people have tried—which is reassuring, that everyone through all the ages wasn’t that stupid or unimaginative, or so easily resigned to the worst—and they’d failed.

All of them, apparently.

Allegedly.

That part is more of a bummer. But Steve Harrington has known he’d find his soulmate his entire life. And he will. So while now he knows he’s up against almost impossible odds, if the stories are to be believed?

He spends high school practicing. Knowing none of these girls are his forever but learning the long way what works and what doesn’t, how to treat someone with care, how to please someone without question. He gets his reputation: Casanova, but not for keeps. He’s good with that.

By the time the Upside Down had entered his world, it was both the worst thing, and the bestthing. Because alternate dimensions were impossible.

Yet here they were.

And what else had he always been told was impossible?

So it could—would—be possible, too.

Steve wasn’t sure he realized how thin of a thread his hope had been hanging on until it rebuilds in chainlinks the more he sees of the impossible, the more he knows again with all of him that when the time comes, he’ll save them.

Make Him Pay was a weird mark to find on his skin in the early hours of 1986, but it meant that he was right. He had a soulmate.

And he had a whole year to find them. And save them. And ask if they’d like a forever, too.

And how fucking lucky, that it barely takes two months.

Impending apocalypse aside, of course. But those were just details. Practically routine, at this point.

the one where eddie blinks one day and wonders how he could be so blind as to only just be realizing his best-friend-roommate-sworn-in-blood-fucking-soulmate (or close enough) has been his whole heart, this whole time ♥️

(but what if he’s made his sweetheart wait too long? 🥺)

(that’s more a me thought than a thought in the fic though; trust the tags 💕)

He can’t for the life of him understand what makes today different. What makes him breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth with his eyes lifted to Steve mid-breath, and in the clench of his heartbeat he sees it. Nothing feels any different but he understands all at once what it means that it doesn’t. And that makes all the difference. Because when he opens his mouth on the exhale it’s like his heartbeat pushes up all the things that have lived in him maybe for forever, that he maybe just didn’t add up as two plus two fucking equals— “I love you.” —equals…Steve.

rating: t ♥️ tags: post s4, feelings realizations♥️, but they were roommates!, (and maybe never just roommates), love confessions, oblivious!eddie Munson, fluff, softness✨, 💕so domestic💕, idiot4man-who-conveniently-loves-his-idiot♥️ let me EMPHASISE SOFTNESS, okay?!?!???

for @steddielovemonth day twenty-seven: “Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.” ― Gillian Anderson

Eddie’s doing what he realizes he does most weekend afternoons. Most evenings in general, even.

They get home from work, or for Steve sometimes it’s school, working on his course load part-time at the community college. They make dinner, bring it home sometimes, order delivery if the budget’s landing in their favor—it hadn’t for a while once they moved, got out of Hawkins and went to Indy as soon as they could once Robin got into school there, but they’re levelling back out, and they’ve got a little flexibility left even as they set aside some of every pay check for trips back home, the possible need to move when Robin graduates because she wants a master’s either in Boston or Chicago, maybe Philadelphia. San Francisco was floated once or twice, too—they plan for all contingencies.

And who the fuck would have seen that coming: Eddie Munson. Planning. Considering a budget. Sticking to a budget. Working a fully legal job with a W-2 and everything. Making his half of the rent.

And again, ending up right here in this very instant: stretched across the couch—the one they nabbed from Steve’s house when they decided to move in together as real roommates versus just half living at each other’s houses, and managed to prove could in fact be broken in to the point of relative comfort when it was actually being used—but he’s stretched over it, ankles dangling off the end and head propped on Steve’s thigh where he takes up the far cushion, and today Eddie’s just reading, tomorrow he might work on fitting words to the chords he put down earlier in the week, or he might sketch a little further into one of the campaigns he’s building—not the one for the gremlins back home that he promised to bring and run for them over the holidays, but the one for the group he’s found here, who he likes well enough and whose DM had moved shortly before Steve and Eddie had gotten their apartment, almost like fate. Maybe he’ll do something entirely different tomorrow, who knows.

Like he said: he ends up this way, here like this, at some point just about every day.

And that’s makes all the difference.

Because when he opens his mouth on the exhale it’s like his heartbeat pushes up all the things that have lived in him maybe for forever, that he maybe just didn’t add up as two plus two fucking equals—

“I love you.”

—equals…Steve.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #fluff #feelings realization #domestic #romance #love confessions #but they were roommates!#(But were they really EVER ‘just’ roommates?)#oblivious eddie munson #domestic fluff #true love #happy ending #stranger things #steddielovemonth #prompt: “…the only person you can ever imagine yourself with“#hitlikehammers writes #hitlikehammers v words