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Are you age 21 or over, ship Steddie, and like making R rated fan content? You should absolutely check out our brand new server collection!
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imagine a "you hear their music" au where a pianist and a guitarist play together despite not even knowing who/where the other is… now imagine that's steddie
just secretly a pianist steve who taught himself to play to deal with his emotions and eddie one day hearing his soulmate playing the piano again and deciding to just pick up his old accoustic and play an accompaniment, the piano falters for a moment before resuming and it slowly goes from depressed and lonely to a peaceful kind of joy
part of our nano NaNo 30-day steddie prompt challenge; day 5, prompt #31: "Please let me help you. I’m begging you to let me help you.” Rated M
[read on AO3 or below the cut]
———
“Fuck,” Eddie scowls, just barely resisting the urge to throw his guitar clear across his room. He eases her onto the floor beside his bed, the twist tugging uncomfortably at the tight, pink skin surrounding his bat bites - not nearly so metal now that they’ve rendered him a fucking invalid, Jesus Christ - and falls back against his pillows with a groan.
“This sucks, man,” he tells Steve as he stretches the weakened tendons in his forearm. Steve, who’s perched at the foot of his bed, nursing a joint and paying no mind to the way Eddie’s got both feet jammed under his thigh for warmth. Steve, who’s still healing from his own bites and scrapes and goddamn strangulation bruises, and who keeps playing the unwaveringly kind and patient caretaker anyway while Eddie just sits there and selfishly whines about his own problems.
Steve, who looks like Autumn incarnate, so pretty in the low lamplight with his smooth, olive skin, his rose dusted cheeks, his marigold sweater. His hair is the color of cinnamon roasted pecans and kettle corn and candied apple caramel.
Steve hands him the joint.
“Sorry,” Eddie says as he takes a puff. “I know you don’t want to hear me complain about my own problems. Like you don’t have it just as bad. Shit, like everyone else doesn’t, either, I just… I just can’t stop thinking about all the things I can’t do anymore, you know? Fucking hand tremors. Think I’m losing my mind a little here, Harrington, if that’s- if that’s even still possible,” he laughs without mirth. “I can’t write, can’t draw, can’t play guitar for more than four minutes without my whole arm cramping up. I can’t even goddamn jerk off anymore! Like, I don’t even remember the last time that I—”
He doesn’t mean to say it, honest. It just slips out in the frustrated stream of consciousness spilling from his lips, but then Steve’s head snaps up, and he’s looking right at Eddie, and, “Shit,” Eddie gulps. “Sorry, that’s, uh...”
Too much. Way too much information, Munson, like, surely this is the thing that gets Steve to drop the patient saint act and leave his trailer for good, right? Because Eddie can’t keep his stupid, oversharing mouth shut?
Steve doesn’t leave.
He doesn’t even move to politely retreat from Eddie’s personal space. He just looks at him, rests a tentative hand on Eddie’s knee, squeezes once. His tongue flicks out to wet his lip, nervous.
“…Can I help?” Steve asks.
“Can you what?” Eddie responds, feeling his eyes bulge half out of their sockets as they dart between Steve’s face and the hand on his knee. Steve’s tongue does the thing again.
“Let me help you,” he says, low and insistent, not a single trace of teasing or mockery in his tone. His voice is barely a whisper, a warm, soft rasp when he adds: “It doesn’t have to like, mean anything, man, just um. Yeah, just let me...”
And something shrivels in Eddie’s chest at that, because- because oh. Is that all this is? Some kind of jock thing?
Eddie can see it now, can imagine what bored, horny heterosexual boys might do to each other late at night in the graffitied shell of what used to be Benny’s, nothing but moonlit dust moats and the hiss of shared breaths for company. How they’d brush it off in the morning, shove at each other’s shoulders and make a quip about ‘queer shit,’ how they’d spit casual cruelty like mouthwash to rinse the taste of each other from their tongues.
But Steve’s not looking at Eddie like that. He’s looking at Eddie, and his eyes are wide and deep and sincere, hayrides and late harvests in that seeking, hazel swirl, and it feels like…
It feels like a plea. Feels like please let me, I’m begging you to let me.
Steddie fans, one and all, if you’re looking to create some festive centric Steddie content this December, why don’t you join us on our 21+ Steddie discord? We have prompts, community, and incredible emotes. All works must be submitted midnight December 24th GMT and will be revealed on Christmas Day, no min / max WC / pieces of art.
A little Steddie thing vaguely based on Kane's Rain Down on Me because of a random number game on discord
He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he started “jogging” around town. Hah. Jogging. More like he’s running. Running from his confusion. Running from his mausoleum of a house. Running from his fears and nightmares. Running from his dreams and desires. Running from his own damn hypocrisy.
He’s been running down street after street after street, each building and lamppost and sign blurring together in an unending loop of civilization. He hasn’t been able to run through the forest like he used to do ever since finding out that monsters are real, and not just the ones wearing human faces.
He knows he’s made progress. Where once he spat the same poison as his father and Tommy goddamn Hagan, where he used to target those who were different, call them fags and queers and dykes like it was a crime, regardless of whether or not they actually were, he knows he’s better than that now. Knows he accepts his best friend fully and wholeheartedly and loves her deeply regardless or in spite of or maybe because she’s a lesbian. Knows he’d willingly and unashamedly and unapologetically break his knuckles on the face of anyone that’d make a target of little Byers the way he himself once did bigger Byers.
Point is, point fucking is, he’s a goddamn hypocrite. Any time he hissed or said or spat or shouted or otherwise called people slurs for being different? He should’ve been facing a mirror and hissed or said or spat or shouted or otherwise called those slurs to his own damn face. Sure, he loved Nancy. Except in hindsight, was he really in love with Nancy? And sure, he loves sex, loved making all those girls before and after and Nancy herself feel good. But none of them, not Jessica Rogers who gave him his first kiss in eight grade, not his first blowie from Belinda Walters in junior year, not Caroline Hawke, not Suzanna Johnson, not Nancy Wheeler, not even Phoebe goddamn Cates have ever made him feel like this. Not like his palms were sweaty and itchy and dry, not like his tongue belonged to someone else, not like his heart was fluttering and pounding and moving up and down in an elevator between his throat and his gut, not like just the thought of them made him short on breath, not like just seeing them smile could make him high.
And yet. And yet, and yet, and yet. Why couldn’t he just… give in? Surrender to the itch to do anything to see that dimpled smile? Give anything and everything for those dark, expressive, gorgeous eyes to truly see him? All his life he’s rolled from one type of misery to the next, avoiding his own truth. Misery that could be so easily taken from him. All those days of misery that someone could so easily take from him. If only he just… gave it all away.
So why? Why, why, why, why can’t he?
Each encounter he feels the question burn on his tongue, constrict in his throat, yet it never comes close to flying free, and it all just builds up and up and up. Each time he lays eyes on his… his crush, each time he hears that precious name, each time those beautiful curls cross his mind, each word of praise the shitheads practically sing about their other older friend. It builds and builds and builds until he wants to demand the other to tell him...
Rain starts pouring as Steve Harrington stops running in the middle of one of Hawkins many streets to rest his hands on his knees and heave for air as he finally, finally, finally admits to himself that all he wants most is for Eddie Munson to look him in the eye and tell him how he feels, what he needs.