Written for @steddie-week day 3, prompt 'long', and written for @stevieweek prompt 'sapphic'
Rating: E | WC: 1,424 | Tags: Sapphic Steddie, handcuffs, squirting, PWP
See ao3 for full list of tags | Divider credit
Eddie fucking hated Stevie Harrington. Hated her from the soles of her expensive running shoes to the top of that head of chestnut hair. Eddie couldn't fucking stand her.
She hated herself even more for falling into bed with Stevie again and again, for letting those perfectly manicured hands grab onto her wrists and her waist. Hated that she loved the way those hands felt against her bare skin.
"That all you got, Munson?"
Eddie hated the way Stevie worked the two fingers inside of her pussy like she had a map of Eddie's body telling her where and how to touch to make her feel good.
To make her beg .
"Jesus Christ—" Eddie gasped as Stevie's head lowered back down, as the other girl dragged her tongue from her opening up to her clit. There was a hint of teeth that had Eddie's back bowing up off of the mattress.
"One more, and then I'll fuck you." Stevie crooked her fingers again before speeding up the movement of her hand. That smart mouth was on her clit again and Eddie practically wailed.
"Stevie— oh my fucking god don't stop—" Her fingers flexed like she wanted to tangle her hands in Stevie's hair, to mess her up the same way she'd been messed up already, but the bitch had found the cuffs and had her hands attached to the headboard.
Stevie groaned, adding to the wet sound of her fingers fucking into Eddie's pussy again and again.
Eddie's thighs trembled on either side of Stevie's head. Her mouth dropped open, and with another flick of that skilled tongue and another stroke over her g-spot she was coming with a rush of liquid. " Fuck— fuck— "
When Stevie lifted her head her chin was wet. She slipped her fingers out of Eddie's body. For a moment it looked like she was going to pull her fingers into her own mouth, but at the last second she decided to reach up, to press them against Eddie's lower lip instead.
Eddie parted her lips and took them in easily, tasting the brininess of herself. She didn't let them go until her tongue had ran over the edge of Stevie's nails, over her knuckles, between her fingers, until she could only taste Stevie's skin again.
Stevie pulled her fingers back only to catch Eddie's lips in a hard kiss. It was all teeth and tongue, meant to bruise as much as to soothe.
It didn't last long. Stevie was off of the bed and digging into her duffel. She stripped out of her stupid skimpy shorts. They pooled around her feet along with her panties, which were joined by the sports bra she hadn't taken off yet.
For a long few moments Eddie could only watch as Stevie got the harness ready. She slipped it on over muscular thighs, had to adjust and thread the cock on the inside of the harness into her own body before she could tighten the straps the rest of the way. Eddie wanted to sink her teeth into the soft flesh where the straps dug in around her hips and her thighs both.
"Enjoying the show?" Stevie teased. The other cock bobbed in front of her as she came back to the bed and climbed between Eddie's thighs.
"Shut up," Eddie said even as she parted her legs to make room for Stevie again. "You know you're fucking hot."
"Yeah, but I like that you think so, too."
Eddie ignored the flush of warmth that sent through her chest. This was just sex. It couldn't be more than that. Girls like Stevie didn't get with girls like her for more than just sex. She pushed the thought down and focused instead on the golden goddess pushing her knees up towards her chest.
Stevie pressed the cock against Eddie's pussy but didn't slide inside yet. She just let it rest lightly between Eddie's folds as she rolled her hips.
Eddie writhed as it bumped over her clit before the tip was just barely pressed inside. "Thought you were going to fuck me."
"And you accuse me of being an impatient brat."
"You are! Always running your mo— fuck !"
Stevie drove into her with one fluid motion. She braced her hands on the bed, her arms holding Eddie's legs.
There was nothing gentle about it. Stevie fucked into Eddie hard and fast, which in turn worked the cock inside of her own body.
Back and forth they moved together— at least, as much as Eddie could with her hands still locked to the headboard and Stevie pinning her legs. Every deep thrust had them crying out. They shared breaths, drank down each other's moans. Eddie's teeth caught Stevie's lower lip, Stevie's nails scraped over Eddie's ass.
"Fuck— fuck— right there!" Eddie urged. She tugged at the handcuffs not to get away but because she needed to do something, to grab on to something if she couldn't grab on to Stevie's hair or her back.
"Yeah? Gonna come for me?" Stevie panted. "Gonna come on my cock?"
" Fuck— " Eddie stared up at Stevie's flushed face, her spit slick lips, those big brown eyes. She wanted to bite into the moles just under Stevie's jaw, too. "Almost—"
Stevie moved one hand, letting Eddie's leg fall to the bed. She worked Eddie's clit hard and fast as she kept driving in deep. "C'mon. Do it, Eddie. Come all over me again."
Eddie clenched down hard around the cock and came with a choked moan. If not for the way Stevie held on to her, keeping their bodies together, she was sure the cock would've been pushed out of her body as she came with another rush of fluid.
Stevie barely waited for her to stop twitching before she was moving again. Her thrusts weren't as deep, and it was clear she was trying to grind down on her own cock.
Her forehead came to rest against Eddie's shoulder as she worked her hips with movements that sped up and became more desperate. Eddie tried to kiss her, tried to rock up towards her, tried to listen as Stevie's sounds became breathier.
Eddie loved those sounds, loved the way Stevie's cheeks turned pink and her lashes painted shadows against her cheeks.
She loved the way Stevie bit down on her collar bone again, leaving more evidence of herself pressed into Eddie's skin as she finally came, too.
As soon as she was steady enough Stevie sat up to uncuff Eddie. She dropped the cuffs on the nightstand, then brought one and then the other of Eddie's wrists to her mouth to kiss over the pink marks left behind.
"Are you okay?"
Eddie snorted and rolled her eyes, ignored the way her traitor heart flipped in her chest. "I'm fine, Harrington."
"Harrington now, is it?" Stevie grinned as she rolled over to lay beside Eddie on the bed, out of the wet spot they had made.
Eddie didn't even try to hide the fact that she was ogling Stevie's tits until she went still again.
"It's always Harrington." Eddie shrugged one shoulder.
"Not true. It's 'Stevie' when I'm fucking you. Sometimes you just call me 'more' when I've got my tongue on your—"
"That is not a nickname!" Eddie laughed. "And it is not always!"
"Almost always!" Stevie cracked up and dodged another shove before Eddie straddled her legs.
"Sometimes I call you 'good girl." Eddie watched the way Stevie flushed all the way down her neck, between her breasts. "When you're the one tied down. I think I've heard you call me 'baby'…"
"Shut up, Munson," Stevie said. There was no heat behind her words. Her eyes were fixed on Eddie's lips as she leaned in to sink down around the dildo still proudly standing at attention between Stevie's thighs.
Those perfectly manicured hands threaded into Eddie's hair. Eddie melted into the fingernails scratching over her scalp and running down to rest against the back of her neck. Stevie just held on to her, not pulling and not pushing, just touching her to touch while Eddie took her time cleaning the toy off with her tongue.
The truth was, Eddie knew that maybe she should hate Steve Harrington just on principle.
But she didn't.
As her body sank down around Stevie's cock, and as Stevie pulled her in for a deep kiss, Eddie let herself think about the fact that something that might have started out as hate fucking had become something else for her a long time ago.
For @stevieweek day 4 (sorry I’m late!) Special Outfit and extra prompts, Scoops/uniform, lingerie & @steddiemicrofic July prompt, ‘one’. Rating: M WC 1,111 words. CW: None.
Tags: trans-fem Stevie Harrington, steddie, no upside down au, angst and feels, platonic stobin, steve has an awesome mom and not-so-awesome dad (also, faintly based on some RL experiences belonging to my other half... used with permission and love ;)) All my ST fic on AO3
Summary: Stevie makes a new beginning, and it’s all super-overwhelming…
…
Stevie was fumbling in her purse for her car-keys. Her mom hurried from the porch with yesterday’s mascara bleeding from her eyes and her hair tumbling from its pins:
“Stevie! You forgot your name-badge.”
“Gotta love company policy,” griped Stevie. At least the dumb thing now said ‘Stevie.’ Her mom pinned it on her Scoops uniform above her padded bra—part of a slinky set Eddie gifted her last time he came home from tour. Eddie was next due back today, which was something to look forward to after the previous night’s trauma.
“You gonna be okay, mom?” asked Stevie. “If you need me, I’ll call in sick.”
“No. This is day one of the rest of our lives. Your father’s finally gone for good. I need to start untangling our affairs.”
“And I finally get to go to work in a miniskirt.” Stevie glanced at her thigh-kissing skirt. She loved it, but… Shit, too much was happening.
His mom had booted her father out for a billion reasons. However, his constant gaslighting of Stevie being Stevie—and her dating ‘that lowlife Munson punk’—had sparked last night’s apocalyptic standoff. “Look, I’m sorry it was me that—”
“Don’t you dare apologise.” Her mom placed her hands on Stevie’s shoulders. “I’m so proud of you, darling. You got a job you enjoy, a boyfriend who adores you, and you always look a billion dollars.”
“In this shitty uniform?”
“Even in that.”
“Still not wearing the lousy hat.”
Breaking the news about her father to Robin meant Scoops opened half an hour late. Then, when Stevie leaned down to pull up the shutter, Robin yelled: “Screw you, Shit-bird, that skirt looks too good, and your ass looks too pretty, and I despise you.”
“You wear a skirt then. You could start a douchey scoreboard for who gets more creepy stares.”
“You know I hate skirts.”
“Quit whining then.”
Bantering with Robin couldn’t distract Stevie from her tiredness and nerves. When her mind started screaming, she focussed on the cling of her skirt, the glide of the silk panties beneath. Eddie would be here soon. Eddie would go crazy for her…
Robin took the phone message. Eddie’s flight was cancelled. He wouldn’t be home till tomorrow.
Dammit, Stevie needed him now.
She was wiping down a table, when she heard a snicker. A devastating mean-girl stare slammed into her.
Right at crotch level.
Stevie glanced down.
Oh. Shit.
Robin found her at the back of the store, slumped forward on the table, face pillowed in her arms. “Stevie? You okay?”
“No.” Stevie jumped up and pointed to the middle-front of her skirt. At the bulge. “Look.”
“Huh?”
“You see? It’s Mr… Miss Pokey.”
Robin shrugged. “Only if you squint.”
Stevie swiped her lank-feeling hair from her face. Her hands trembled. “I’ve not even gotten an erection or anything. Everyone’s staring.”
“They’re not.”
“They are! I loved these panties, but the silk triangle at the front bunches everything forward and…” Suddenly, it was all super-overwhelming. What the heck was she… HE… doing? He’d wrecked his parents’ marriage. Eddie was probably lying about the flight to avoid him. “Jesus, I look horrible. I’ll put the shorts back on.”
“Don’t you dare.” Robin shoved a banana across the table. “Eat that. You’re cranky when you’re hungry.”
“It doesn’t solve—”
“No, it doesn’t. I have an idea what will.”
…
“It’s too weird not having to shit myself about your Pa taking pot-shots at me,” said Eddie, when Stevie led him into her bedroom. It was stacked with boxes—her mom had already got the decorators in. “Got you a lil’ something, Babe.”
Eddie presented a crepe-paper parcel. Stevie smiled tightly and sat on the bed to unwrap. It was gonna be more underwear, but her confidence was so shattered that…
She held up the swathe of peachy cotton and white lace. “You got me granny pants?”
Eddie beamed and Stevie couldn’t help giggling.
“Jesus, did Robin call you? Or my mom?”
She stripped off and pulled them on, loving how Eddie lapped her up with his thirsty gaze. Stevie couldn’t keep her own eyes from the mirror. The panties pressed her in slightly in the front, perfect for a mini-skirt or figure-hugging dress. Eddie swept her hair from where it dusted her shoulders and hooked her matching bra. He trailed kisses down the sweep of her neck, each sending a delicious shimmer down her spine, then twirled her around.
“I love them, Eddie.”
“Me too, honey. You look amazing. I could’ve got ones that pad at the hips but with your teeny waist…” He traced it lightly. She shivered with pleasure. “Nah, don’t need it.”
“Can’t believe I’m feeling hot in big panties.” She leaned back into his embrace, dizzied by the weird relief of the moment. It was no way as epic as her father having finally gone, but…
“Shall I order a dozen, Stevie?”
“Hell, yeah.”
They both tumbled sideways onto her bed. “Cool, Babe. Let’s get you outta them.”
They took it slow, kissing till he was wearing her lipstick. Then he set her squirming, her fists clenching his hair, as he nibbled around the cute lace at the trim of her panties, before slipping his fingertips teasingly beneath. Slowly, he peeled her free. Stevie hadn’t waxed today, but that was fine, because hairy was what she was sometimes, and Eddie, as he whispered again and again, worshipped her every way she was.
They made love, fixing deep in each other’s eyes. Stevie’s panties looped her thigh like a slinky garter.
…
It was a week later when Stevie, for the first time since her father left, found her mom crying. She was hanging out the washing on the line.
“Mom, what is it?” She hurried over, and yes, her mom’s eyes were teary. And she was laughing. “Mom?”
Her mom reached up and brushed knuckles down Stevie’s cheek. “Don’t worry about me, darling. I’m happy.” She nodded at Stevie’s new panties. “They remind me of my gym kit. You know, the good old cheerleading days. Never marry a Jock, darling.”
“Wasn’t on planning on it.”
“Eddie really is the one, isn’t he?”
Stevie’s heart panged with happiness and sadness at once. “Still time for you to find your one and only, mom.”
They pegged the rest of the washing up together: “Gotta ask, mom—did you want a daughter?”
“I only ever wanted you, Stevie,” she said, then, slightly crossly: “But if your long-haired lover’s late for family dinner again, I’ll kick his ass back on tour.”
“Mom!” Stevie pitched a sock, which her mom neatly caught. “Don’t be mean.”
Written for Day 2 of @stevieweek Gender Euphoria with bonus prompts t4t and Scoops. Coincidentally also hitting Day 5 of @steddie-week with Reunion/Getting back together lucky me!
Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson
WC: 7679 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | CW: Features Eddie using the word tranny to refer to himself | Tags/Themes: Transfem Steve Harrington; Transmasc Eddie Munson; Steve & Robin Best Friends Forever; Steve and Dustin have a sibling relationship; Childhood Friends to Strangers to Lovers; Small Town 80s typical discussions of gender
AO3
It’s been a long summer.
That’s probably the least of what can be said about the month Steve has been working at Scoops. He has a coworker that hates him, the emotion he’s sure of the reason not so much. The kids only want to see him when he’s either giving them something or letting them in the back to sneak through to the movies. And his favorite kid isn’t even here.
Wasn’t even here.
It’s finally the week Dustin is supposed to be back from camp. And it’s not like Steve expects to be the first stop on the welcome back tour, Dust had sent a letter from camp -- surprising when he told Steve before he even left not to expect anything. Camp Know Where was the kind of camp, “that demanded your full attention the entire time you’re there, Steve.” Except when the counselors are requiring you to send one letter a week to the homestead so there’s no parents worried about dead kids or something.
That hadn’t been something anyone was afraid of when Steve went to camp. But he also didn’t have parents who cared if he went missing. If Mrs. Voorhees went nutso on his summer camp they would probably have just liked having the excuse to sue. Everything is a money making opportunity.
But Dustin’s Mom liked him, and Steve knew Mrs. Henderson would want first dibs on smothering her precious son with all of the attention that she hadn’t been able to give him in his month away. Then there was supposed to be some big Doorknobs and Dipsticks thing -- a name he was going to have to remember to repeat in front of Dustin just so Steve could appreciate the way it’ll make him groan.
Then after all that there will probably be time for Steve and Dustin time.
Which is only serving to make the day stretch longer. Because that’s the kind of summer it’s been.
After a month, it’s probably safe to say that nothing is really going to make this summer feel like a success. Something that he knew he was going to be able to say from the moment they handed him the uniform that it was going to be a miserable time. It was square and boxy, the ascot so long that the little red tie hung at his bellybutton. The shorts are okay, well they became okay after a trip through the dryer on the wrong setting changed them from baggy and saggy into something that cupped his ass and displayed a work safe amount of thigh.
He doesn’t even want to talk about the hat.
There’s a voice in his head that gets a little louder, a little more insistent with each shift as he puts on the uniform. There are only so many more things he can do while staring at his reflection in the mirror to make it shut up.
An end of the year haircut turned into highlights, when the thought of losing any of the length he’d been steadily growing out made him feel the same way getting called Little Guy used to make him feel. Which turned into figuring out the perfect way to get the blowout style waves in under twenty minutes, because he wasn’t spending more than that on hair that was going to get hidden under a stupid hat that was just going to push it back and make his forehead look weird. Which turned into noticing that his forehead looked weird so the things below the forehead had to look better so that no one would notice when the hat was on. The brown mascara had probably been Mom’s but could have been Nancy’s or possibly Carol’s, but either way it was sitting in the drawer of the third bathroom he looked in -- Steve knew it was there the whole time, it rolls in the drawer everytime he opens it looking for the nail clippers and every time it did he looks at it the way he thinks people who haven’t seen monsters probably look at snakes.
And the mascara was good. Gave him big, doe eyes that he liked watching in the mirror as the girl in there swayed this way and that, making sure the blonde highlights didn’t need to be toned to keep from going too brassy.
Only after a little while that stopped working too, and the mascara turned into a two step routine. Lipgloss, chapstick really, toned because it tasted like cherries.
And that was enough to feel like normal, for a little while longer. But the itch was there, a mosquito bite Steve wouldn’t stop itching until the skin was picked open.
But it was just loneliness. He’s always been like this. Left alone for too long without someone to distract him and he’s prone to spiraling.
The summer right before freshman year when Tommy and Carol both got grounded for a month for getting caught at the quarry drinking, he spent hours alone in his room wondering what life would have been like if he’d been born as a girl instead. Thanksgiving Break ‘84, without a girlfriend and his parents in Toronto or Cabo or Ohio, he sat alone in the living room with the curtains drawn as Some Like it Hot played on the TV. With a blanket pulled around his shoulders, he watched Daphne more than any of the others. Wondering if he could ever go back to being Jerry now that he’d gotten to experience being other. By then he could quote along with the movie by heart, he had seen it so many times he could practically play it in his head when someone else had it rented. He flopped down on the sofa in time with Daphne, spoke aloud into the empty house with her, “I'm a boy. I'm a boy. I wish I were dead.”
Now, in the middle of the worst summer of his life. He’s had the movie out so long he thinks it would be less embarrassing to just never go back to Family Video ever again. It’s been so long since his parents have been home or looked at the entertainment center he probably could have bought his own copy. He plays it every night until he wakes up to the static of the television. Still it’s not enough to keep him from laying in bed wondering about the girl who first told him to watch it and what she would think about what he is and isn’t now.
But Dustin is coming home and maybe he’ll bring the Steve Harrington he’s supposed to be in a suitcase or something.
The next day the blue of his uniform washes him out. That’s the reason he comes up with to rub a little bit of the pink Avon blush he found abandoned at the back of his Mom's vanity. A thumb rubbed gently through it, picking up just enough of the color that it shimmers on the pad of the finger. He rubs it into the round of his cheek. Swiping and rubbing at each one until it's impossible to tell if any of the color is still there or if it's just from his touching that's left them cheery and pink. The blush, the lipgloss, the mascara, the hair. Steve feels something like happy at the reflection in the mirror. Everything settling less like the costume he put on everyday since the middle of senior year.
Then Dustin gets home, and he's found a top secret Russian code.
They never would have made Jill or Kelly or Agent 99 wear a stupid fucking uniform like Steve's. But no one looks at him more than twice as he scurries around the mall with Dustin like the Moneypenny to the kid’s Bond or whatever.
He wouldn't hate it if the alt guy with the ratted out hair and vest browsing in the record store or the jazzercise guy looked a couple extra times.
Dustin stays at the mall for the rest of the day, hanging out in the back working on the code. In between customers Steve does what he can to help. Mostly that looks like trying to run interference with Robin. Her antagonism seems a little friendlier lately, but with her fun stolen now that Dustin was back -- and more important than trying to land a date he cared less about than sating the loneliness -- he could tell she was watching. When the mall is closed he walks Dust out the employee hallway, his bike shares the rack with Robin’s, the only two left even with cars still dotting the lot. He offers like every shift to give her a lift home.
“Like my bike would even fit in the trunk next to kid genius,” she says as she kicks off. Dustin unusually silent beside him. “I’ll catch you tomorrow, Harrington.”
The kid brother that forcibly adopted him stays quiet the entire time Steve is loading his bike into the back. But worry doesn’t set in until they’re pulling out of the parking lot and he still hasn’t said a word.
“So other than the girlfriend-”
“There’s really nothing going on between you and Robin?” Dustin interrupts, something steely but unsure on his face. “And don’t just say the same stuff about her being a nerd. You exclusively hang out with nerds. You obviously aren’t still holding on to that high school stuff anymore.”
He doesn’t know if it is that obvious, but even as he consciously setting that thought aside; the thought of dating Robin, taking her out and showing her off and possibly getting so far as intimacy, it feels weird. The kind of weird that thinking about dating Carol felt like, a half step in the direction of wrongness.
“Even if she didn’t totally hate me, dude, that’d be like if I asked you about dating El or Max.”
Belatedly, he remembers Dustin did have a capital T Thing for their random girl. But the comparison carries the correct weight.
“You have to find your Suzie then, man.”
It's hard to bite back the hysterical laugh, the thought that they'd rather be someone's Suzie. It's easier to push the twerp off than to touch that sticky, raw scab they couldn't stop picking. Still something about being in the car, the comfort of having their favorite kid back makes it feel safe to talk about a girl they’ve never stopped thinking about.
“I already met my Suzie,” a laugh makes it out before Steve can even think to stop it. “Literally Susan M. Even met her at summer camp, she called herself my boy named Sue.” Smiling out the windshield, they think back to that summer. It hadn’t been a reference they’d understood as a kid, not until Sue had made the joke again too close to one of the counselors. At home Steve had made Mom go get the album the song was on. They played it so many times they could find the track on the record without even looking.
“She called me her sweet Stevie,” they finish. It’s something they haven’t said to anyone.
That uncharacteristic quiet is back. Dustin looking at them; but with the softest parts of themself turned over, half exposed in a way even they haven’t looked at before, Stevie doesn’t look back. Just keeps driving the familiar path to the Henderson house.
“What happened?” Dustin asks, softer than they think they’ve ever heard his voice.
Maybe bringing up the lost summer camp love to a recent summer camp boyfriend wasn’t as smart as they thought.
“Tried to write but I guess they moved. People do that sometimes, I guess, send kids to camp so they’re out of the way during the move. Letter came back return to sender and she wasn’t at camp the next year.” They weren’t back the year after, determined old enough at 12 to stay home alone during the summer.
“Maybe you’ll find her again. If she was really your Suzie.”
“Maybe,” Stevie says. It’s easier than digging any deeper.
Later it won’t feel so much like digging when they’re sitting in the bathroom high.
Stevie feels like floating away, like underneath the skin it’s all bubbles. They’re there lifting up everything: the mood, smiles, secrets.
When Robin asks, “Have you ever been in love?”
It feels easy, for once, to bring up Nancy. It feels just as easy to say, “I think I met the love of my life when I was 10 years old and it was a girl who acted like a boy and treated me like a girl. Do you think that's like a sex thing and I'm just now realizing it?”
“I had a crush on Tammy Thompson and she liked you, that’s why I hated you.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
The moment feels loaded. Bubbles popping in the air. Stevie doubts that’s what an OD feels like.
“Tammy’s such a dud.”
“What and you think I should have had a thing for a girl like you?”
Bubbles again, bright and fast and fizzy like a shaken up coke. Exciting, explosive.
“Yeah, well, at least I can sing.”
Dustin and Erica interrupt karaoke but Stevie can feel something solid setting into place beneath the foamed up feelings.
It turns out being an adult and not having to go to school leaves you with a lot of time to kill.
Being reported as the hero of Starcourt who pulled a bunch of kids and a coworker out of a burning building bought another year of living rent free in the Harrington house. That and the passionate bond with the female coworker who was still in high school. It was easy to make promises that neither of them planned to keep while on the phone with her parents. Lies laced with truth, the two of them would be leaving for whatever city Robin picked for college with every intention to stay bonded for life. That was good enough for Dick and Diane to look the other way for another year.
So with time and money to kill Stevie spent the hours Robin was in school looking for the kind of secret bookstores that Robin’s heard about. The ones with zines and pamphlets about people like them.
And they learn and they change. And she's chasing that feeling she felt in that dingy mall bathroom where her best friend called her a girl. She’s a girl, she’s a girl, she’s a girl. She sometimes feels like she’s Daphne at the end of the movie. Shaky and a few wrong sentences away from pulling off her wing and throwing in the towel.
And Eddie Munson is stealing her goddamn kids.
That’s a separate part of her new life. Not that it’s any less frustrating. She’s figuring out how to be her own person in a way that’s not gonna get her killed, and she has to compete for attention with the king authentic.
“If you’d just meet him,” she’s barely listening to Dustin’s insistences. She’s heard them all before and Keith is lurking somewhere in the store waiting for her to slip up.
“I don't want to meet your Geek Mother.”
“It’s Dungeon Master,” Dustin tails her around like a second shadow. “And I think you would actually have a lot in common if you’d just talk.”
“That there’s something wrong enough with both of us that we want to spend our free time with you gremlins?”
“Ha. No. You both like those shitty, pulp, horror novels, you both like cars, you both have a secret love of Johnny Cash.”
“Oh yeah, a real recipe for best friendship.” She rolls her eyes into the cover of Flashdance, somehow he feels like Alex will be more receptive than her brother. “I’ve got Robin, I’m not really interested in any more friends right now.”
“Okay, well, he’s kinda meeting me here so.”
“What? Dustin!”
The bell above the door tongs, Stevie glares daggers and nailbats at Dustin while she shouts out the required, “Welcome to Family Video.”
The sound of metal hitting something solid carries over the sound of Oxford Blues. Normally it’s the sound of feet shuffling on the carpet that gives her the chance to make sure she’s the right amount of everything. Surviving this slow paced transition on the virtue of already being known around town as a pretty boy, as long as she keeps the right amount of butch it’s fine. At least Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy keep their hair short. She’s taken them on as hair icons until she’s in a place where she can grow it out long like Farrah or Brooke Shields.
A place where hopefully she’ll be able to add the occasional skirt to her wardrobe. She adjusts the rise on her jeans, she’s got no idea where Munson is. It’s hard to track the slap of his chain in the store the way she can dragging footsteps. Tugging at the belt loops of her pants, the ones she got from the women’s side of the thrift store, she feels like it’s obvious from the cut they’re different. Swears they hug her differently.
She doesn’t know if she wants Munson to be able to tell, but he’s coming around the bend from the Romance section and she can’t really do anything about it.
“Henderson,” Munson greets even though his eyes are locked hard onto Stevie. It’s been a quiet day, maybe she left one of those butterfly clips El gave her in her hair.
“Eddie! Did you grab the movie you said you were gonna show me?”
“Where’s the fire, Henderson?” He has a nice voice. Pitched in a nice warm tone it has a husk she thinks she can feel. Gives her goosebumps. It’s not that she didn’t know that already, or maybe she didn’t, in all the ranting and screaming he did at school she thinks she remembers it higher. Cracking even as late as his junior year.
He’s looking at her again, something molten and complicated in his eyes, “Why don’t you officially introduce me to your favorite babysitter.”
Dustin sighs, full bodied and dramatic. “You went to school together, do I really need to?”
“No manners in these kids these days,” Eddie jokes. “You are not the same person I went to English third period with.”
Something bubbles up in the pit of her stomach, a little bit fear and a little bit joy at being recognized as something different. “That could be because you were barely ever in third period English.”
“Touche. And in that case it's all the sweeter to meet the fabled Stevie.” He grabs her hand by the tips of her fingers, sweeps his other arm out as he bows and presses a kiss to the little gold ring Robin gave her. She’s surprised by the sound of her own giggle.
“Can we be done with what’s happening here?” Dustin interrupts the fireworks happening in the back of her brain like a mindflayer on the Fourth of July.
“You were the one that wanted us to meet,” she reminds him.
“And I immediately regret it now that it’s happening. I need better impulse control, you and Ma were right.”
“Really are the best babysitter in the world, humility out of Henderson is like getting blood out of stone,” Eddie teases.
“You were coming out of Romance, what is this favorite movie you were going to show me?” Dustin demands now, a pink flush to his face like they’ve succeeded in embarrassing him too.
“I could like romance, I contain multitudes. And I said I was showing you my favorite horror movie, Re-Animator got shelved there a couple weeks ago. My favorite is a comedy and never on the shelves.”
“Someone just brought back Ghostbusters today, and we were holding Goonies for movie night this weekend, but the kids have seen it before,” she offers, taking a blind stab at the kind of comedies that might make it to Eddie Munsons's favorite list. It's really a puzzle made more for Robin.
"Excellent features both, but I'm afraid my favorite is a little more black and white. Caught Some Like it Hot in a Marilyn Monroe double feature at the Hawk with Wayne as a kid. Used to rent it at the Blockbuster all the time before I moved to Hawkins full time, it's always rented here so," he grabs Dustin by the cap, shaking the kid's head roughly back and forth, completely oblivious to the way Stevie's palms have started to sweat around the sticky case of Halloween.
"Who sorts their favorite films by genre?" Dustin asks, the question wobbling out of him with the shake of his head.
"I do, shortstack, by genre and all kinds of criteria your yet to be enlightened brain hasn't even thought to try."
"Sure, whatever, did you grab your favorite horror movie yet?"
Instead of answering, like a normal person might, Eddie Munson takes a step closer to her. He leans in close enough that she can smell the cigarette he must have smoked before he came in, the smell of his deodorant below that. His arm brushes against her lower back as he reaches and reaches.
She's gotta talk to Keith about getting the a/c fixed.
Eddie is close enough she can count the stubbly hairs of his not quite mustache. There's something about his eyes that reminds her of someone, but it's hard to place. Unlike the exact location of his right arm, currently brushing against the waistband of her jeans.’
And then he's gone.
In his hands he's got the black clamshell box of the movie, and Stevie feels a little bit like an idiot. "I could have moved."
"But then I wouldn't have gotten to appreciate the sweet, sweet smell of your hairspray."
With a sigh that could probably propel him into space, Dustin announces, "I'm going to the van."
And even though it doesn't really mean anything, it kind of feels like it might mean everything when once he's out of earshot she decides to tell Eddie, "I actually have that movie. That's why you can't ever find it, it's one of my favorites too."
Before he can finish the door alarm sound again, and she would recognize the sound of converse on the dirty store carpet even if Robin didn't immediately shout, "Stevie, you better get a brick someone locked your kid in their dirty van." She rounds the corner to find whatever scene she and Munson must make, the two of them too close together to be in a store with Family in its name right beside the horror section. "Oh."
"I'm across from Little Red, in the park," Eddie takes a big step back, hands stuffed in his pockets in a way that makes him look a million times more suspicious than if he'd just pulled away. She'd been right that it was a mistake to ever meet him. "If you wanted to bring that movie over sometime."
"We'll see, Munson."
He’s got the widest smile on his face that she only gets to appreciate for a second before he sweeps down low into a bow. The dimple in his face screams of a mischief that makes her think of childhood. “I know I shall, fair Stevie.” He nods at Robin, who trails him to the desk to check out while Stevie goes back to putting the returns on the shelf while they have that moment of quiet.
Moment of quiet from customers anyway, the second Eddie is out the door he takes Stevie’s last chance of peace with him.
“Were you just flirting with Eddie Munson,” the thought doesn’t tick up because Robin isn’t asking a question, she’s making an accusation.
“He was flirting with me.”
“But you were receptive to it.” She decides correctly and immediately. “Are you gonna go over there?”
Reaching under the counter for the wipes she’s started keeping there, Stevie carefully wipes off the gunk on her hands from the grimy video cases. Taking the time to try to figure out what she even wants to say.
“I’m just trying to survive. He knows who I am, who I was,” she corrects, “I’m not trying to do anything stupid that’s going to jeopardize our escape from Hawkins or being able to protect the kids.”
Pushing up to her tiptoes, Robin takes a quick glance around the store. Even though the room must be empty for her to even risk continuing the track Stevie has started them down, Robin still leans in close enough that she can smell the fruity scent of the gum that Robin always chews after lunch. “Maybe don’t jump to conclusions, you know the kind of rumors that go around about him. Like why he flunked gym twice before he got that doctor’s note, because he wouldn’t dress out with everyone else.”
She’s thinking about the guy who kissed the ring on her hand even when she says, “I think we already know that you can’t trust rumors. If they were all true then I’d be gay but compensating and you’d have gotten fired from the Hawk for letting the film burn because you were having sex in the bathrooms.”
“Part of that is true, I did burn that film reel.” She waves him off with a flap of her hand, stopping the movie on screen as it reaches the credits and tossing it to Stevie to rewind. She snags one off the counter at random and tosses it in the VHS player connected to the main screen. Stevie recognizes the start of Victor/Victoria as Robin leans against the counter in a way that screams she isn’t feeling as casual about the thing she’s about to say as she’s pretending she does. “And I mean, visually, it’s six of one or half-a-dozen of the other, right? You like both.”
“Okay, well,” she’s scrambling for something to say and she knows Robin can tell. “Eddie can just be my Vickie then, how about that?”
Stevie has backed them both into a conversational suicide pact. But she knows Robin well enough to know that she’s too scared to take the Vickie bait. While she’ll glare, and boy does she glare, she’d rather let Stevie get away with the blatant denial than admit she might have a real chance with her fellow bandkid.
“I think I’m gonna add Notre Dame to my application list.” She changes the subject, right on time.
When she’s holding a single VHS tape outside of Eddie Munson’s trailer with her hair carefully styled and her favorite lipgloss on. It’s too late to be wondering if maybe she’d been a little bit too right about calling Eddie her Vickie. The cab of the beemer is looking especially inviting, but she’s been in the Mayfield trailer when people have pulled up to their houses and there’s no way in hell that the Munsons haven’t heard her pull up.
A curtain twitches, like someone inside is aware of her internal debating. She tugs on the sleeve of the soft, colorblock sweater she’s got on, forcing the neck to ride a little lower on one shoulder.
And as the plastic case creaks in her hands she gives in and knocks.
Eddie is breathless when he answers the door, even though she was positive he was the one twitching the curtain just a second ago. He has a hoodie on that matches her out of season sweater.
“I wasn’t expecting you to actually show up,” he says, “I didn’t think to mention that my Uncle is asleep.”
“Oh!” She isn’t sure what else to say, standing on the porch with the news that she wasn’t actually expected.
“I just mean I would have told you to come by after he was awake so we could actually watch the movie.”
She glances back over her shoulder at her waiting car, “So should I-”
“No!” A strong hand closes gently as the friendship bracelet Robin made her around her wrist. “I’m not doing this right. I just mean you’ll have to kill some time in my room with me.”
“That’s some line.”
His eyebrows disappear into his bangs, the faint flustered pink that had been taking over his cheeks blooming into something someone who wasn’t staring intently at his face would notice. With a doglike shake of his head, he says, “This isn’t going the way I thought, hold on back to one.” And the door is shutting in her face.
When it reopens a bare second later, Stevie is sure she must be gaping.
“Hi Stevie, thanks so much for coming and bringing that movie we talked about. My Uncle is asleep in the living room right now, but don’t worry he works nights so he’s a sound sleeper. If you’ve got time, we can hang out in my room for an hour until he gets up and then we can watch it together.”
“Hi Eddie, thanks for giving me the 411 so clearly and without any possibility of confusion. It sure would be embarrassing to think that you hadn’t actually wanted me to come over.”
He pulls her in off of the front porch into a house that has things. After keeping herself awake last night worried that she would accidentally reveal something with her familiarity with the movie or that she wouldn’t be able to stop staring at Eddie. But with the mugs and the caps hung up on the walls, there are hundreds of things to distract herself with while she hangs out with him.
“Wayne’s a semi-professional thrifter.” Eddie tells her, it's hard to know if he's correctly interpreting her awe.
“Is he not good enough to go pro?”
That dimple is back, deep as the quarry dug into the side of his face as he drags her past the man in question, asleep on the pullout couch. “Oh he is, but he's too scared to quit his day job. He prefers to keep it a hobby.”
Before she knows it, she's a girl in a guy's bedroom on what's questionably a date. And according to some of the zines she's been a girl in a guy's bedroom a lot of times, at team overnights and birthday party sleepovers.
But this feels different right now. Maybe it's the knowing: that there isn't something wrong with her and that she is what she is. Maybe it's the not knowing, does Eddie have expectations for the afternoon? And she doesn't have a clue what he does and doesn't know.
As her wheels are spinning against the road, trying to grab onto anything to get moving, the babysitter brain kicks in. Instinct the snow chains of the mind, later she'll talk to Robin about whether she should be concerned about that.
“3 inches!”
Eddie freezes with his hand on the door, more like an inch from latching.
“I, um.” He's looking at her now, and she's scrambling for an explanation that sounds better than ‘I've listened to multiple baby teens complain about this particular prophylactic and now that I'm on the other side of the bedroom maneuver I'm feeling a little inexperienced.’ She just isn't sure how well that would go over.
“The hinges squeak, good call.” He flops down on the bed, beckoning her a little closer. All she can think to do is sit at the edge, it makes her feel prim, too proper and too aware of the way her body fits in this room.
After the silence starts to drag, and she starts to question whether or not she's made a single good decision since November of 1983, Eddie asks, “So, what makes Stevie Harrington tick?”
“What do you mean?”
“Single handedly supporting the social lives of a generous handful of mouthy teenagers via unpaid taxi service, enjoys black and white cinema or at least enjoys this movie enough to risk the wrath of the VHS gods,” he ticks each one off on his fingers as he goes. “What else is there that makes you, you? Do you like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain? You look like you could be into yoga.”
The tension breaks like it had never been there to begin with, she tries to hide her laugh in her hand. The door is open, and Eddie's uncle is sleeping. “Oh my god is that that Jimmy Buffet song?”
“Escape is not a James Buffet number, your majesty, that's Margaritaville. And you're dodging the question.”
He's calmer than she remembers from high school, but still that bright passion he seems to have for everything is too much to look at directed at her. The warmth of him as hard to look at as the noonday sun. “I don't think I'm that interesting,” she casts her gaze around the room instead looking at all the personality that Eddie has shoved into the place in the few years he's lived here.
“I think you're lying.”
His closet is bursting from its boundaries. A sea of black pushing its way out in a waterfall of clothes onto the floor.
“You think I’m lying about being boring?”
Jeans, shirts for bands she’s never heard of, a skirt.
“Tell me one weird fact about you, and I’ll tell you how you are definitely not boring,” he insists.
Skirts, multiple, now that she's looking she can recognize the shape of them. Is that a heavy metal thing? If she changed her style could she get away with finally wearing one in public.
“When I was a kid, I rode my bike to see 101 Dalmatians in theaters like six times. Then one day I found this fur coat in my mom’s closet and I made her get rid of it because I didn’t want her to be the kind of person who could own fur.”
“An animal activist,” Eddie says, “see, interesting. And proof of my bigger point that you, Stevie, are one of the best Hawkins has to offer. Aren’t you?”
It’s hard to imagine how he got there when she’s mentally rifling through his things, trying to figure out a way to ask about-
“They’re gifts from confused but well meaning long distance relatives.” Eddie explains, done politely ignoring where Stevie’s attention was actually focused. “I was a tomboy as a kid, so when they heard I was a tranny I guess they got confused. I felt bad donating them or throwing them away, made with love.”
That’s probably the bravest thing she’s seen that doesn’t involve flesh eating monsters. Stevie musters up the courage she taps into when fighting those monsters to say, “Me too, opposite direction. Obviously.”
“That would make you the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen then, Stevie Harrington. And definitely still the most interesting.”
Euphoria, big like soap bubbles, fills her chest. It already feels like she could float away when he asks, “You wanna try one of them on?”
“You wouldn’t care? You just said they were homemade.” She’s already off the bed though, running a thumb over the soft black cotton. Up close she can make out the faintly lighter blacks and greys of a flower pattern. It’s beautiful.
“Well I wasn’t blessed with the gorgeous ass you’ve got, but it should fit just fine.”
She doesn’t have to be told twice, it's off the hanger and clutched in her hands before Eddie’s finished complimenting her. And oh, that sends some of that bubbling joy flooding a little farther south.
That new not revelation is easy to table. Drowned out by the feeling she gets when the skirt swishes around her knees. Light and floaty as cotton fabric. She’s a balloon flying out of some kid's hand disappearing into the clear blue sky.
“What do you think?” She twists and twirls, the long fabric spinning out around her like a princess in a Disney movie.
“Pretty as a picture.”
Her eyes snap up from the swirling black of the skirt, in time to fall down deep into the dark expanse of Eddie’s focused gaze. Hot and heavy on her.
For a second, it throws her back to when she was a kid. Standing on the dock at the camp lake, a pair of dark brown eyes staring at her while her beach towel wrapped around her like a dress. Twisting this way and that, posing with a hand in her hair that had grown longer than she was usually allowed to keep it after a missed summer cut. They’d just climbed out of the water, fingers pruny and faces ruddy from laughing.
“How do I look?”
“Pretty as a picture!”
“Thanks, Eddie.”
Mouth open, whatever he’s about to say that warrants the way his eyes go soft and nervous is swallowed by an older man’s voice shouting down the hall, “Ed, you and your friend can come out and use the living room. I’m up.”
It’s refreshing, having one more person she can be herself with, fully. Having someone who understands even better than Robin what it feels like to be different. To feel the way she’s always felt. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t been in her life for forever the way he slots into it so easily.
But then maybe Dustin had a point, she has a way of attracting nerds.
And once they’ve found her they latch in and don’t let go. Feral cats every single one of them.
“Just put something on, Stevie, I swear to god.”
Eddie’s where he is most of the time these days, flopped sideways across her bed. Hair hanging off the side in a dark wave. Ratted out as it is it’ll defy gravity for longer than natural when he sits up again. But it looks beautiful now, the way Eddie always does.
“You say that now and then it’s all, ‘did the estrogen break your eardrums? How can you even like Wham?’ and ‘The only good thing Fleetwood Mac ever did was break up.’”
There’s a thump behind her, she doesn’t have to turn to know he’s flailed his way onto the floor. She does turn to see how his hair lifts up from the roots like the bride of Frankenstien. “I did not say that shit about Fleetwood Mac, Rumours is one of the best albums of all time.”
“No, you’ve just defamed everyone else in my record collection.”
“It can’t be everyone,” he groans, “your entire collection can’t be Wham and Huey Lewis.”
“You’re forgetting Madonna and Blondie, pretty sexist of you Munson.”
“No, the ladies are where your taste shines through. That’s my planned window in, you see,” Stevie turns back to her record shelf, carefully paging through each one while Eddie talks. ABBA, Adams, Benetar, Bowie. “I’m gonna make you a real rock’n’roll mixtape, get you on the right path. Joplin, Heart, The Runaways, Girlschool.”
She lands on the perfect album, tosses it on the table and starts it spinning. It’s not until the jaunty guitar starts bouncing that she realizes what she’s done.
“Shit, sorry, let me set it back. You probably want to listen from the actual beginning of the album.”
“No, no, leave it, it’s fine.” Eddie says in the toneless way she’s noticed he gets when he’s focused. “Do you always skip straight to this track?”
“Yes?” Stevie knows this is one of those times when the answer she’s giving is going to mean something even if she isn't sure what the question hiding under the first is.
“Is there- I mean, is this just your favorite song or do you always start three tracks in on the B-side when I’m not here?” His laugh is weak, and it’s noticeable when everything about Eddie is so sure and strong.
She tugs on a single lock of her hair, twirling it around her finger before tugging. A nervous gesture she’s picked up from Eddie, now that it’s long enough. “There was this kid I went to camp with, first love shit, you know. We lost touch but she called herself my Boy Named Sue all summer. When I got home this was the only song I’d play for months. It’d finish and I’d pick the needle up and put it back at the start for hours. I really hope she’s doing okay now, however okay looks like for her.
“Anyway, it’s just a force of habit. I can put it back to the start or pick a new album if you’ve got shit to say about the man in black too.”
There’s a dazed sort of reverie on Eddie’s face that he doesn’t snap back from until she moves for the record player. “No, no, play it again. I, um, shit- Okay, so I need you to not be mad at me.”
She doesn’t even need to look to set the track back to its start. Eddie’s got his hand fisted in his hair, pulling at it hard enough that it hurts her scalp, chewing at his bottom lip. Nerves have always made her a little mean. “I’m already feeling a little mad at you, say what you’re going to say.”
“I was going to tell you that first day we were hanging out,” he’s digging around in his back pocket for his wallet like it isn’t on a leash he could tug on like a dog, “we were sharing these mutual coming out moments and I thought, ‘now’s the time I’ll tell Stevie, everything is going to be great.’ Only Wayne woke up and ruined the moment and the longer we kept hanging out the harder it was to bring up again.”
“Just spit it out already.”
The photo insert hits her in the chest. Fumbling, she bats at it between her two hands before she’s able to get a firm catch. Raising both her eyebrows in a question Eddie barely answers with a wave of his hand. Even as she rolls her eyes, she looks down at the photo in her hands. A larger picture, carefully folded so that two kids are at the center. She recognizes the picture, has a copy of it in a shoebox in the back of her closet where she keeps all the tiny precious things she doesn’t want her mom to throw away when she starts decluttering. A picture of everyone who made it to the last day of summer camp, and now made center of this one is a ten year old Stevie with her arm flung tight around… Around Eddie.
“Surprise,” he says.
“You're? And you've been?”
“We moved right after that summer, I’ve told you the kind of guy my dad was. Not like evil or anything, just incapable of keeping his nose clean and he’d gotten into some trouble in Fort Wayne that sent us to Indianapolis for a bit. When I tried to write, I realized I’d either lost your address or it’d been thrown away.”
“What about when you got to Hawkins, with Wayne?”
“My voice still cracked when I got nervous, and you’ve always been the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. And it wasn’t like I looked the same way I did when we were kids, and at first you didn’t either.” She remembers the way she styled her hair back then, the tragic mustache she’d tried growing freshman year cause maybe that would make her feel the way everyone else said she was supposed to. “You looked muted, sad. But then I saw you laughing, at an FFA party I was dealing at, and when you tossed your head back I finally saw Stevie again.
“And when Henderson started coming around talking about his best friend Stevie. Stevie, who was the coolest person in the world. Who kept taking on all the worst parts of the world to keep people safe. And I latched on to him as hard as I could hoping I might get to see you again. If it was puppy love when we were ten, I've got a whole dog pound now I'm so in love with you. Maybe that's crazy to say.”
She can't listen anymore.
“Eddie, stop.” Before he can shut himself down, shutter closed and make his excuse to leave, she lets her own confessions tumble out faster than she can think of what she even wants to say, “You have made me feel more like myself since we first met.”
Her skirt, a deep plum and stolen from Eddie's collection, gets tangled around her ankles as she knee walks close enough that she can touch him. “You've given me confidence and clothes and a name.”
“I added an -ie, Sweetheart.”
“And I like it! It feels like me. I feel like me, and you helped me get there.
“Maybe it is too early to say things like I love you, but I loved the boy who refused to make friendship bracelets for anyone else at camp but me and now he's just promised me a mixtape.”
Stevie knows she could go even longer, could give a Shakespeare worthy speech about all the ways she likes Eddie Munson and what he has come to mean to her as the summer love she cherished in her heart and now. She could, but it's swallowed by the press of Eddie's mouth against hers. An ugly, spitty, puckered lip, perfect first kiss.
She gently corrects the motion until the kiss becomes something sweet and gentle. The kind she'd been hoping for when she'd gone back to camp that following summer. Something that belonged to sunscreened skin and freckled faces. Soft, innocent. But felt just as right here in the bedroom she’d grown up in with Johnny Cash on the stereo and the scent of the perfume she was trying out hanging in the air.
Eddie pulls away, moving just far enough to lean his forehead against hers, his hand coming up to cup the back of her neck. She can feel each slow exhale against her mouth. “I’m really glad I found you again.”
Written for @stevieweek Day 1. stobin, no extra prompt used.
T | 214 | platonic stobin, fluff, stevie has bad parents
-
Stevie had never been as glad to have anyone in her life than she was for Robin. They were truly soulmates, and even while they wouldn’t ever be romantically involved, their lives would be intertwined for the rest of forever.
Robin had always made her feel so accepted, from her initial coming out to the second one, when admitting that she was a girl had been far more frightening and nerve-wracking than telling Robin she was bisexual. Robin hadn’t teased her either time, which had made Stevie cry on both occasions. But her best friends arms had been open for her and her shoulder there for her to cry on for as long as she’d needed to. Stevie was truly blessed in Robin.
Apart from her fashion sense, which didn’t reflect Stevie’s own, now that she was carefully trying to express her femininity in a way that flattered her body as it currently was, which wasn’t the body she wanted to have. Yet. It wasn’t the body she wanted to have yet. She hoped it would be, some day, because while his parents may have disowned her, she’d gained full control of her trust fund from her grandpa before they had, which was more than enough to chase her future and fulfill her dreams.
”You look really pretty, Stevie, always did.”
Robin was standing beside her, a wide grin on her face, looking at Stevie’s reflection in the mirror with her.
”Prettier now.” She decided.
Robin put her head on her shoulder. ”Yeah, happiness makes you shine.”
I'm late (only discovered this event today), but have my lil fill for day 2 @stevieweek! Prompt was "gender euphoria," but it can also (probably) fill "first dress."
Rating: G | CWs: Dysphoria | Word Count: 707 | Pairing: Gen (or can be read as one-sided Stobin)
“It’s shocked me to my core, but I like you. I really like you. But I’m not like your other friends, and I’m not like Nancy Wheeler.”
“Robin. That’s exactly why I like you.”
“Tammy Thompson. I wanted her to look at me.”
“But Tammy Thompson’s a girl… Oh.”
It’d been months since their conversation on the floor of the men’s bathroom at the Starcourt movie theater, and Steve still couldn’t get it out of his head. At first, he’d thought maybe he was still weird about Robin liking girls, but that didn’t feel right. He’d thought maybe it was his crush on her, but he respected her boundaries. She was his best friend, and that was perfect! He’d never had anyone like her in his life before. Tommy used to be his best friend, and he’d never even come close to how much Steve and Robin clicked.
Steve spent night after night staring at the ceiling of his bedroom in the dark, forced to contemplate it. It was that or think about the nightmares. He’d been, not sad, something else, when Robin essentially told him she didn’t like him back because he was a boy. It wasn’t how being turned down normally felt. This was like a throbbing ache in his chest and a hollowness in his stomach. It felt like being called bullshit by Nancy. Like he was wrong. Then the tears started falling.
He only let himself cry like this in the dark of his room with his parents away. Great heaving sobs where his breath hitched, clutching at his chest like he wanted to rip it open to tear out the negative feelings.
All his thoughts swirled through his head like he was drowning in them, being whisked away in a flood.
He remembered all the times he had felt like this in the past. How sometimes, with his skin crawling, he’d rush to the bathroom and frantically shave all his body hair to feel safe and normal. How his voice dropping had made him scream into his pillow at night. How he’d rub his fingers over and over his mother’s silkiest dresses when his parents were gone.
He’d explained it all away. He got used to being hairless during swimming, so of course, it felt weird having it back during the off-season. Alongside voice changes, puberty caused strong emotions from hormones (or something like that; that’s what the guidance counselor said during sex ed), so of course, he had the urge to scream sometimes. He missed his parents, but especially his mom, so of course, he wanted to feel close to her by grabbing the hem of her dress like he would when he was little.
It was all adding up, though, and sure, he wasn’t good at math, but he could add two plus two. All those times when he stared at girls’ hair and makeup a little too long feeling envious of how pretty they were. How much care and attention he paid to his own hair, keeping it as long as his father would let him.
Maybe he was… a girl? He- she- she decided to test her idea.
In the dark of night, she padded down the stairs to her parents’ room. She looked through her mother’s closet for a dress that looked like it might fit. She grabbed the first one she found in a stretchy fabric and headed to the ensuite.
The drawers on the right held her mother’s makeup, and while she didn’t quite know how to put it all on, she’d seen Nancy and her mother do it enough times that she could make a decent guess.
She pulled the dress over her head, fluffed her hair, and started in on the makeup. It felt right wrong right, so she leaned in as close to the mirror as she could so she couldn’t see the whole image. Just focused on applying the eyeshadow, liner, blush, lipstick. Until there was nothing left. Until she had to step back from the mirror.
She burst out into tears again, instantly ruining her work. Mascara ran down her cheeks. But her heart soared. She felt like she’d float away into the stars.
Squeaking in under the wire for @stevieweek day 4: Special Outfit with bonus prompts: lingerie and DnD/Fantasy. Plus I'm counting this as my @steddie-week Day Seven Free Space
Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson
WC: 3217 | M | No Archive Warnings Apply | Tags/Themes: Transfem!Steve Harrington; Transmasc!Eddie Munson; Fade to Black
AO3
It starts with a blouse.
No, that’s not right. It actually started when Stevie asked how earring a suit of armor didn’t chafe, and if a pair of keys could stab through a beer can how were arrows not sending stabby metal pieces into people.
Which actually probably means it really started with layers. Like the extra layer of leather, done up to Eddie’s chin when he called her back. “Make ‘em pay” wasn’t the send off she’d expected after the big boy and other flirting. Flirting that had made her stomach twist and her heart flutter and her brain flinch with the close but not quite of it. But maybe that’s why she’d sent her own return volley. Why she’d grabbed hold of that half done zipper and left Eddie with a pat to the chest and a promise to do just that.
She totally saved his life with that move. Her, the leather jacket, and some extra breast tissue Eddie wasn’t really using, all working together to keep razor sharp fangs from tearing flesh and puncturing any important organs.
That breast tissue maybe saved her too, when she learned just what having it made Eddie and what it meant about options she hadn’t known were there. They had a lot of time to talk in their shared bat bite isolation chamber.
Talk about layers that go under chain and metal to protect knights of the realm and their devoted squires that help them.
That started in the Upside Down, finished in the hospital. And this started in the thrift store.
The blouse was white. Pure white, basically neon, white as the virgin snow. Totally not Stevie’s color, the fresh wedding white brings out the undertones in her skin in a way that leaves her looking sallow and liver failure-y. But something about the sleeve catches her eye. The way it balloons before gathering at the wrist.
It’s a 70’s throwback for sure. Reminds her of the cover from the album Eddie brought over a few weeks ago, Little Queen. Robin has her face screwed up before Stevie even has it all the way off the rack. Hating it but trying to be supportive the way she has been throughout all of Stevie’s transition from Steve to who she is now.
“That is… wow!”
“It’s super ugly, and not even in a cool way.”
Robin slumps against the rack, sending a hanger cascading to the floor. She scrambles down to pick it up but Stevie doesn't miss her, “Oh thank god.”
“The best thing to happen to you was my sense of style not changing.”
“I know. You’d look good in anything, but my wardrobe offerings would have shrunk.” Seeming to remember the source of the freak out. She snaggs the shirt. “So what’s with this thing? I think even you’d struggle to make this look good.”
She takes it back from Robin’s disapproving grip. Holds it up to herself just to see the way Robin’s face contorts. The neckline is going to do nothing for her, not low cut enough to show off the way her boobs are coming in. The poof in the arms will accent her shoulders . And it’s so, so white.
“It made me think of Eddie,” she says, fingering the loose tie that’s hanging down the front of the blouse.
“It is very vampire lord,” Robin admits. “Might even make him look tan.”
Layers, knights would wear padded shirts under their armor and under those drapey shirts in cotton and linen. He’d been excited when he’d talked about it. Passionate. The way he got when he talked about Lord of the Rings or DnD. She holds the shirt even tighter against her, turns this way and that even though she can only kind of make out her reflection in the mirror at the end of the row. It’s an ugly shirt. But it makes her think of knights and Éowyn and paladins and Eddie.
Eddie flushed pink and beautiful, squirming in his seat in a different way than he usually does, talking about devotion and pledges. Duty and honor.
“I’m gonna buy it.”
“For Eddie?” Robin asks on a sigh. She already knows the answer.
“He’ll certainly get to enjoy it.”
The problem with being the one to come up with a plan is she has to be the one to follow through with it.
Part of her knows the blouse would be enough. She could dress it up just right, flirt a little, and have Eddie eating out of the palm of her hand.
But the part of her that had a flair for the dramatic that rivaled her boyfriend’s wasn’t going to let her skimp unless she took every possible step to fully achieve her vision.
So she goes to the only person she knows who might be able to put the final and most crucial piece of the scene together.
Flopped across the Henderson couch, she’s making herself comfortable for her and Caludia’s date with Dallas. She’s too cozy to get up, decides it's easier to flop her head over the arm of the sofa to shout at Dustin while he rummages through the kitchen.
“So if I was trying to get my hands on some of that chain link armor stuff, would you know a drama club nerd who might have some?”
“Yeah, I have some.”
“You have some?” she can feel her eyebrows raised up into the middle of her forehead. She went to him for a reason, but surely she would have known if he was capable of affording something like that. Was that why she was footing the bill at the arcade every week, so he could have suit of armor money?
“Well it's not like it grew in the backyard, I made some.”
“Made some?” she flips around on the couch, this has become the kind of conversation she has to look at her brother and have him be rightside up.
He’s got his hand on his hip which isn't as commanding when he’s also holding a glass of milk in the other. It’s cute though, like he’s trying to channel her.
“What are you an echo? It's not like it was hard. You need some wire and pliers and patience.”
“And you?”
“Har har. Yes. Do you want to borrow it or not.” The threat is there even if she doesn’t think it’s that sincere. It’s fucking armor she doubts he could hide it that well if she wanted to just come in and take it.
But she makes nice anyway cause she’s a good sister. “Yes! Sorry.”
“Ma's got all that jewelry making stuff and you know I like to work with my hands when I'm talking with Suzie.”
“Disgusting.”
It was a joke. But it’s a joke that sends his drink sloshing over the sides of his glass as he startles. A good friend, even if she doubts he’ll ever acknowledge it, she stifles her laugh in the palm of her hand as he turns a shade of red that is medically concerning.
“Ew, don't be crass, Stevie,” he stutters out.
“Is this even going to fit me,” she takes pity on him, dragging the topic back to her, “you made it for yourself half-pint.” The insult barely works, a summer growth spurt has left sophomore Dustin towering over her shoulder. Well, not towering, but he can see over her shoulder now.
“I made it for Mike, actually, so he could be his paladin at that convention in September. But he wouldn't let me measure him cause I ‘know what he looks like’ and it came out too big.”
“Oh so it'll be perfect for me.” She tries to make it a joke, but hearing that it was made for human stringbean Michael Wheeler has her nervous in the place where all of her ugliest body issues live. At least if Dustin had made it for himself it would have just looked like a crop top.
“Well, it still might not fit because of your,” he gestures vaguely at her front.
“Boobs, Henderson, they're boobs. You can call them-”
“Alright!” He shrieks, “I was trying to be respectful.”
“When have you ever been respectful? And don't say it's because I'm a girl, I'll push you into Lover’s Lake.”
“I wouldn't talk about El’s or Max’s is all I'm saying.” He says into the glass in his hand.
“But I can borrow it?”
“If it fits over your boobs,” he says the word like it's in a foreign language he's neither spoken nor heard, “you can keep it. I know it's for some weird sex thing with Eddie and I don't want it in my closet knowing what it's seen.”
Honestly it's for the best, because if this goes the way she thinks it's going to she really doesn't want to have to figure out how to get stains out of aluminum. But it's hard to resist the siren song of torturing Dustin. “I can't believe you're calling my sex life weird, are you saying there's something wrong with us? That we aren't a normal couple like everyone else? I thought you were a friend.”
“Nothing about Eddie is normal and he'd be offended you tried to suggest he was so I'd feel bad.”
“Yeah, good point loser.” She snuggles back down into the couch, she never really gives the episodes of Beauty and the Beast that much attention but this one should be wrapping up soon. “If it doesn't fit over my tits and it sees zero action do you want it back then?”
“After this conversation, I'm not sure I ever want to see you again. So just keep it. I'm sure Eddie will find some kind of use for it.”
There’s another quip at the tip of her tongue that she knows will send Dustin into fits, whether they would have been of rage or denial she’ll never know. The front door is slamming open bringing with it Claudia at the end of her swing shift.
“Stevie, dear,” she always bustles into the house like she’s carrying an armload of groceries even when it’s just her coming home in her uniform, “never go into nursing. Doctors are some of the dumbest fuckers on the face of the planet.”
It occurs to her, the attitude might be a family trait. Maybe that’s why they adopted her so easily. If only she could pull off the tiny hat the way Claudia can.
All of the pieces of her plan stay hidden for weeks. Folded up carefully in an oversized hatbox in the back of her Mom’s extended closet. The hat, a monstrosity purchased for a Derby she doesn’t think they’d even gone to left to gather dust or whatever it is hatboxes are meant to prevent.
The chainmail had fit. The weight of it as surprising as the cool feeling of it against her fingers.
She has the clothes, the accessories, even bought something silky and golden yellow to go underneath. Like the armor wasn’t going to be sexy enough for Eddie. Lingerie under lingerie like a hat on a hat, but she has to feel sexy or else she’s going to feel like a complete idiot.
She kind of already feels like an idiot. Something in the knowing that the top and the chain and the yellow bra with the flowers embroidered on it are all upstairs makes her anxious in a way she hasn’t ever been with Eddie before.
Hands haven’t been wandering during their movie nights. She keeps her feet kicked back behind her, crossed at the ankle, when they’re sharing a booth at dinner. There’s always a fifteen-going-on-sixteen year old chaperone in the car with them, sometimes even in the front seat as she pretends she’s just making sure they’re getting pre-prepared for their upcoming drivers tests.
And sitting next to him on the sofa, a whole cushion between them for the first time since ever, she watches the careful way he makes each line as he sketches and cross hatches what she can just make out to be a flowing haired knight. Her resolve breaks.
Stevie craves him the way she used to want ice cream on a hot day. The taste and feel of it an almost physical feeling, she would want it so bad. That’s what horny feels like now, she’s slowly realizing.
Before she can overthink it too much more, “I wanna try something.”
Normally she thinks of Eddie as having a kind of feline grace, he slinks and when he does fall off of something he isn’t supposed to be on he grins like it was always the plan to reacquaint himself violently with the floor. But the hint of suggestion in her voice has him perked up on the couch like a dog that just heard his leash come off the hook.
It's embarrassing how badly she wants him.
“What were you thinking, baby?”
He’s better at this than she is, at the lead up. The introduction. It’s a different skill to slowly introduce the concept of the strange, a change. Different than foreplay. She feels like she’s propositioning her proposition. The thing about slow, missionary in a room with the lights dimmed, no bandaids need to be ripped off before.
“You’ve roleplayed.”
“Not the kind I think you’re suggesting.” He’s impossibly more perked. Notebook and pencil still and poised like he’s about to start taking notes. “But I’ll try anything you want to do, however you want to do it.”
Maybe it isn't healthy, but she likes that about Eddie. That he’s all in on her, obsessed maybe. Willing to push himself out of his comfort zone for the sake of letting her have what she wants or try what she thinks she wants.
She likes how a few right words will turn him into putty she can squish and meld between her fingers.
“I’m gonna go get changed.”
Now that Eddie is waiting downstairs for something spectacular, it isn't so hard to pull that box down from its hideaway and slide each layer on. She already knew it wasn’t that hard to get the chain on and off by herself, she had tried it on. Maybe squires were for the heavy metal suits like on Scooby-doo. Or maybe it was about the intimacy and the ritual even back then, sliding on pieces and parts meant to keep the other person safe from harm knowing later if there was a chance to undress again you could see just how you helped save them.
Next time, she thinks, they should do this the other way around. She can get Eddie off a couple times, clean him up, and slowly dress him in each new layer. Until he’s lying in her bed armored in metal and cocooned by her cotton sheets. Safe from anything the world might want to do to him. Under her panties, and the sports leggings she’d decided where the sexier choice of pants, she can start to see the evidence of her arousal in the full length mirror.
It’s a good thing Dustin doesn’t want his stuff back.
Her finishing touches go on next. The gold ring with the small green stone that Robin had given her slides on to her index finger. Then around her neck her holy symbol, the guitar pick from Eddie’s first post-almost dying show. Tossed at her from the stage in an act of Bon Jovi badassery. She had gently poked a hole through it and now she slides it on its dainty, gold chain around her neck.
She tugs at her hair in the mirror, the one part that isn’t quite right. In her vision it’s finally grown out, beautiful waves that would fall out of the ugly helmet she doesn’t have when she pulled it off. Waves like Brooke Shields or the girl from One Day at a Time who married the guy from the band Eddie liked have instead of the bob she’s growing out now.
But it would grow and in the meantime she looked hot.
Stevie looked really hot. Swallowing around the saliva pooling in her mouth, she remembers she has a boyfriend to show that to.
Her first reward is the sight of Eddie's jaw dropped against the floor.
“You remember the other day, you were talking about how paladins could get leveled up so high they basically became gods too?”
Stevie knew that wasn't right, but she liked watching the nerd part of him war with the boyfriend part of him. One itching to correct the mistake and the other looking for a way for her to be correct in a roundabout way. Usually, it leaves him flushed and wide eyed, like his brain is overtaxed and with just a little more stress steam will start to burst from his ears to keep his brain from melting. Last week she had him arguing with the Party that humanoid didn't mean hobbits couldn't also be little rabbits.
She decides to take pity on him now, his wheels skidding blankly on wet road.
“I want you to worship me.”
He's agreeing, she thinks, before he's even sure what he's agreeing to. Dropping to his knees in front of her just like the worshiper she imagined: awe struck and devoted. Her divine intervention on his unfinished prayer kept him alive. Eddie Munson would let her kill him if she wanted to, if it suited her whims.
Good thing she wants to keep him for forever.
His hands slide up the back of her legs. She can feel the hot trail of them from the calf up to the thigh.
“Beautiful,” he breathes. Presses a kiss to her knee, her thigh, the chain that covers her hip. “My hero, my knight.”
In the end, she didn’t need the blouse or the bra and panty set. She still has her chainmail on when she eases them both down onto the couch. Running her fingers through Eddie’s hair from his sweat damp temples to the tangling ends she’s careful to keep it from getting wrapped in the links while he rests on top of her.
“I don’t know where you came up with that, my lady, but I think that was the hottest thing to ever happen to me.”
She tugs at the end of his hair just to watch the way the lingering arousal dances across his face. “I got that from the way you creamed your jeans while you were playing with my clit.”
“I am but a man, my golden sun. When a paladin of Apollo is before me what can I do but show my utter devotion.”
“You liked it? It was good for you?”
Maybe it’s a testament to how good it was that Eddie isn’t immediately off the couch. He only shifts enough to rest his chin on her stomach. Looking her in the eyes or maybe at the bottom swell of her breasts.
“Steph, that was the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me. You’re a vision in everything you put on,” he assures, “but where did you even get this?”
“That’s the bad news, if you’re hoping for a better fitting part two I think I’m gonna have to give Dustin my measurements.”
Written for @stevieweek Day 5: AU! A little peek behind the curtain here, originally I was going to do another installment of my Miss Congeniality!Stevie/Rockstar!Eddie universe until I had the world's longest day of work and they say write what you know. Now here we are.
Pre-Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson; Robin Buckley & Stevie Harrington
WC: 3523 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Tags/Themes: Nonbinary!Steve Harrington; He/Him Lesbian!Robin Buckley; QPR Stobin; Librarian!Steve Harrington; Pseudo Influencers Stobin; Steve & Mike Friendship
AO3
“What are we doing, Stevie?” Robin’s voice coming from over their shoulder is a surprise if only because until Mrs. Robertson’s grandkids put her in that home next month they don’t actually live together.
Wrist deep in dishwater, the only sign they let slip that Robin startled them is the splash the plate they’d been washing makes when it lands. Flicking away water and suds from their fingers, Stevie reaches over to turn off the music they’d been playing. “If I turn around and I’m staring at your phone camera, so help me god.”
“Don’t turn around then.”
Ripping the dish towel from the stove door, Stevie gracefully dries their hands taking the time to get the dishwater wet out from between each finger. Satisfied, or calm at least, they turn to face the two unblinking eyes of the cameras on Robin’s android.
“Robin.”
From behind his phone he grins back at them, unabashed and uncaring as usual that he’s been filming for god only knows how long. “So do you want to tell everyone about what they just saw?”
They shove gently at the phone, jostling it enough that they can get past. There are a ton of things that need to be done around the apartment, chores that had been put off for Friday, but Stevie moves to the sofa instead. Now that Robin’s here nothing is going to get done. “Not really,” they say as they settle into the spot on the couch that they’ve perfectly broken in, “you know I hate it when you use your lifestyle vlogger voice with me.”
“Stevie!” Robin groans, flopping down onto the couch beside them. The camera is still up, but there’s no way the footage isn’t a blurry, motion sick mess with all of the movement that the two of them have forced it to do.
He looks at them from over top of the phone, eyes serious even as he maintains the light and bright influencer voice on, “We owe it to the world to be a shining example of queerness in the homogenized world of the blogosphere. Me, a beautiful, occasional he/him lesbian. You, a chest-haired example that nonbinary doesn’t mean fem-lite, the both of us educating the world on what a queerplatonic relationship looks like and how it isn’t just ‘friends with a fancy name.’”
“Fine.”
“Fine!” he shoves at their shoulder, shaking them with a good natured vigor that pulls a laugh from Stevie for the first time in hours. “Okay, starting over. Stevie, do you want to tell our viewers who are helping us afford that new condo what they just witnessed.”
“There really isn’t anything to explain, Robin.” They say in the voice they’ve started adopting when the camera is in their face. Fake, a little extra. Something just a step beyond the persona that they relied on to get through the first couple years of high school.
“Ugh!”
“There isn’t! It’s been the longest day in the history of the entire world,” they point at the camera, looking into those blank black eyes. “If anyone in our audience has kids that they bring to a library, be good and kind to your children’s librarians, they are suffering.
“I wanted kids,” they say as an aside to him, “remember how I wanted kids.”
Robin rolls his eyes, “So you’ve had a long day and decided to do what about it?”
“I’ve had the longest day.” They correct. “My one man department hosted three events, saw three hundred kids and someone peed in the floor.”
“So you decided to do what about it?”
“So I did what I always do at the end of a really long day. I put on my person-maker playlist.”
“Which is different from your baby-making playlist.”
“Obviously. That’s for sex. ” Stevie grins, mostly for Robin but they know it will get gif’d by the minimal audience that the channel the two of them ‘share’ has collected. “This is a bunch of songs that sound good when they’re really loud, with a solid bassline that I can play until I remember that I’m a person with a body that gets 12 hours at home before I have to go back to work and have parents ask me again why I don’t have the right free stuff to give to their kids for reading books.”
“You’re losing the plot and making me sad.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Which one of us had to clean up another human person’s pee today as part of their job after getting yelled at for not having enough dinosaurs?”
“Who is the only band on this playlist right now for the third year running?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Say it like what?”
“Like there’s some kind of meaning to it.” The collage of their faces that Robin has as his phone case gets caught in the corner of their eye. Reminds them that this isn’t just a conversation between the two of them, it’s one between them and the 3,689 subscribers that help pay their bills. “It’s Corroded Coffin, a band I like a normal amount especially compared to our friends. When I was in high school it was a lot of dad rock and glam metal. When I was in college it was Fall Out Boy. This doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything when you’re 28 years old and thought about pinning a poster of the lead guitarist to our shared-”
“This is my apartment, you don’t live here. We are still living our ‘the door is always open, shared, individual apartments across the hall, Friends, Joey and Monica’ fantasy.”
“One, nobody has ever referenced Joey and Monica in duo and don’t think I’m gonna let the implication that I’m Joey slide. Two, you’ve just admitted that it’s our shared living space! As your partner in crime I get to decide which things mean things.”
“Oh yeah okay. Speaking of things meaning things: does this video have a point or did you need a full explanation of my activities before you post something humiliating me?”
“Nope,” he says with an undue cheer, “just thought you looked like a dingus shaking your ass while doing the dishes to a grown man screaming about how sex is also religion or whatever.”
“That is not what that song is about.’
“I’ll take your word for it, I didn’t grow up repressed and vaguely Catholic so I’m sure I’m missing some context.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever,” he mocks.
They think about letting this be the rest of the evening, getting baited into another argument about stupid shit that they'll meander through for hours. At some point, as they chase each other's tails like puppies, Robin will forget he's filming and drop the camera and Stevie will actually be able to relax. But even with their mouth open Stevie thinks better.
“I might be the repressed former Catholic listening, but at least I know the songwriter also has a thing about punishment and forgiveness.”
They wink as the camera falls down into the sofa cushions, disappearing for however long it's about to take Robin to stop being mad at them. Now though they have opened themself up as a target of revenge, sharp smacks come along with cries of demonetization.
Robin's face is, thankfully, just as familiar blurry as it is in every other state. The only way Stevie could be any more familiar with that face is if it stared them in the mirror every morning. And that familiarity saves Robin from a trip to the floor, when Stevie blinks awake to him looming overtop of them.
“You can't be mad.”
“Whatever you did to me in your dream, you're forgiven. Unless it was shaving my head again and then you're dead to me.”
Flopping down from the plank he never had any hope of holding, Robin covers them from chest to toe. “I shaved both of our heads, it was an act of rebirth. I know you remember this. It was literally the day after our shared gender moment.”
“And I wasn't mad. Dream Robin is forgiven, real Robin needs to get off so I can go piss.”
The weight disappears from their chest, the feeling of the bed shifting under the added weight of their best friend comforting even though Stevie can feel the way he fidgets now that he's over there. Reaching for their phone on the bedside, their fingers close around nothing and suddenly things start making more sense.
“Where's my phone?”
“Why do you need your phone to pee?”
“I'm not playing questions with you, if you broke it just say something. I won't be mad. If you're pivoting into a prank channel I will be.”
Without their glasses, it's hard to make out what Robin’s face is actually doing but his hands fidget in the duvet with guilt.
They can't be sure what his eyes are doing, but it feels like the two of them are locked in a movie standoff style, tense eye contact. Stevie can hear the kinda racist musical sting playing in their head. They squint. It doesn’t make anything easier to see, but it soothes their flaring sense of drama.
The two of them stare: three, two, one.
Stevie lunges first, but Robin’s elbows are sharper. They catch one to the shoulder in a downward karate chop. Twins in every way that matters, Stevie knows that Robin is only like a half inch shorter but his limbs gangle like he’s Big Bird and there’s a smaller person inside piloting him. Every time Stevie grabs for an arm or wrist they roll away, jerked in by strings. Stevie can see their phone, clutched tightly enough in Robin’s fist that it looks like it could crack.
He pulls it in tight to his chest, rolling into a roly poly ball around it.
“Okay, okay,” Stevie says, rocking back on their heels. Sight is the best place to move forward from here, if only so they can decide what kind of angry they should be with Robin right now. It’s hard to land on one when they can’t see any of the details on his face. Scrunchy face guilt is different than the kind where he can’t stop from smiling.
They lean around each other like stray cats circling in an ally. As Stevie reaches for their glasses on the nightstand, Robin rolls away with the phone still clutched tight to his chest. With them on, they can make out the pinched brow and brittle edges of his forced smile. This is more than just guilt over something, this is the same fragile shock from when he got into a college two states away and didn’t know if they’d come with. This is the face that came to Stevie the first time a research hole turned recorded rant posted online to make it easier for the Party to watch ended up being seen by ten thousand. This is the Robin that got a job offer someplace different than Stevie for the first time in years and didn’t know what to do about it.
“Just tell me what happened.” They flop back down on the bed beside crunched up limbs. Poking fingers into the ticklish spots behind kneepits until Robin starts to unfurl. “Whatever it is, I'm sure we can fix it together.”
“The video went viral.”
“That’s great?”
“Like really viral,” Robin repeats, the fluster taking over the normally soothing tone of his voice. “Like if we actually see any of the money from the video after it got ID claimed it’ll pay our bills for months viral. I had to start reporting comments for hate speech because I didn’t want to turn them off completely -- some of them are really sweet -- and the subscriber count has skyrocketed. It's kind of intimidating actually.”
“Sorry I’m so irresistible.” Robin still doesn’t crack a smile, the more he talks the more it looks like he’s about to crack apart. “Seriously, Robs if it’s just people being creeps on social media it’s not a big deal. You wouldn’t believe the kind of comments I get on my Instagram.”
“I think you should delete all your social media. Think about how cool and mysterious you would seem.”
“I think you should just show me whatever it is you think is going to freak me out.” Their phone has completely disappeared now, it’s probably been shoved deep into Robin’s sports bra where it will stay until he thinks the crisis is averted or until the sun explodes. “Is it work? One of the bitchy homeschool moms found it? My mom found it? Nancy found it and called you to say it was actually me and not her; and also she’s ending your flirtationship because virality is bad for her work? Tommy found it and called us both slurs but mine was in that kind of repressed sort of flirty way like he might want to hook up at the class reunion next month?”
“Stop guessing!”
“What! You’re freaking out, and since you won’t actually tell me why I’m stuck guessing. Unless you can get rabies from accidentally making one sorta popular-”
“Super popular.”
“Briefly popular video that no one is going to remember in a week from now because it’s the internet, then I’ve kind of run out of worst case scenarios,” they pause. “Oh! Wait, no, I’ve got another one, a really popular ‘this week on the internet’ content reviewer got both our pronouns wrong even though you literally said yours in the video.”
“Corroded Coffin saw the video and made a public comment about it.”
Stevie buries their laugh in Robin’s stomach, “Yeah, sure, if our worst case scenarios are happening inside one of those band fanfictions Mike wrote as a kid that he thinks we don’t know about.”
The rasp of the bandaid on the tip of Robin’s finger comes before the warmth of her palm on Stevie’s cheek. Face tilted up they can see the way the nerves have blown away like snow leaving only an icy seriousness.
“Corroded Coffin saw the video,” he repeats each word, leaving a pause large enough to drive a truck through between each one, “and they made a public comment about it.”
There’s a ringing in their ears. Just overtop of that they can barely make out the sound of their own voice saying, “Let me see.”
Their phone appears from under Robin’s shirt like a rabbit from a hat, expected but no less miraculous. The notifications on the lock screen are ridiculous, numbers that make them realize their night’s sleep was saved only by the grace of do not disturb. Every person that’s ever been saved in their contacts have messaged them and every social media app they have has an red notification alert on it. Whatever public comment Robin was talking about would be impossible to find in the sea of people vying for full time public librarian and part time internet assistant Stevie Harrington’s attention.
Except every single one of their favorite baby geniuses has texted the screenshots, several times.
Mike is at the top of their inbox, beating out Dustin for the role of informant by ten minutes. He’s sent them 15 new messages, the most recent one an image and the word ‘Explain.’ He’ll be more fun to tease once they know what’s going on anyway. Dustin’s message looks more like a rant, the first sentence cut off but ‘I’m the one who intro…’ doesn’t look half as fun.
Message sixteen comes in before Stevie can open the others. The same image again and ‘How did you do this?’ Definitely the one to go to.
The same picture has been sent with every message. Making it easy to find out what has got the whole world up in arms.
Corroded Coffin @Corroded_Coffin_BandYes, we’ve seen the video. Eddie is very interested in knowing if he also features on the baby making playlist
robin rob bobbin @rockin_robin
This is why i’m learning sign @believieinstevie
[video]
Eddie Munson @eddiemunson_ohfishall
Replying to @Corroded_Coffin_Band
I said I wanted to find out what was on it the way Satan intended, just give me one chance Stevie please 🙏😈
“See what I mean.” Robin groans.
Already moving on from Mike’s messages, making sure to heart each one before they leave, Stevie has Twitter open scrolling through a heap of notifications they didn’t give a shit about looking for the one name they did. “Sure do.”
“We could take the video down, but I’m not sure that would fix anything.”
“I’m not worried about it, Rob, really.”
“Then what are you doing? Cause believe me doom scrolling through all of the terrible things people have said about you first thing in the morning is not the way you want to spend the morning.”
“I'm not doing anything.”
“You're mad, aren't you. I'll take the video down, we can pretend like this never happened.”
“If you do that I will be actually mad at you.” Stevie says. At this point it probably wouldn't really matter but the point is what's important. “Didn't you say we're making a ton of money on it?”
“If we get to keep any of it, the music copyright claim system is confusing and we've never really made enough money on anything to do more than splurge on nice pizza and wine on movie night. I think we're going to have to start a podcast.”
“The world doesn't need one more podcast. We would be like the Basement Yard but better.”
Robin wiggles down the bed like a worm, arms tucked in tight to his sides, moving until the two of them are nose to nose. A fucking busybody, Stevie saves them both the trouble and adjusts the phone so he can see it too. It took a couple tries but they finally found the tweet from Eddie, he had followed back too.
“Are you sure that’s the first thing you want to say to the guy?”
“You think I’m coming on too strong? He already knows I’m into him and his stuff.”
He shrugs, makes a face that Stevie easily interprets as yes but with exceptions. Robin actually says, “You’re better at this than me.”
Stevie Harrington reformed babysitter @believieinstevie
Replying to @eddiemunson_ohfishallI’d love to hear how you sound screaming over top of it. If you ever actually wanna take your shot.
Sending it off, Stevie spares a second to wonder if maybe they should have thought this over a little longer. Here in the middle of their fifteen seconds of fame, a thirst tweet is more than just an ill advised harassment it carries weight. These thoughts aren’t going to get buried under an avalanche of fellow desperate attention seekers.
They take a screenshot to capture for posterity what will either be the last moment of semi-normal life or one of the most embarrassing faux pas they’ll probably ever have. Either way it’ll make an interesting story a couple years down the line, especially if Robin keeps this digital media creator thing up.
Another text from Mike comes through at the top of their screen. A series of frantic question marks and on the wind Stevie thinks that they can hear the sound of his scream.
They’re just vain enough to be certain that he turned on post notifications waiting to see what they would say in response to his current favorite musician.
The floating dots are in the text window when Stevie opens it up to respond. “How mean are you going to be?” Robin asks.
“He told Holly to ask me if I was really old enough to remember when phones still had buttons this week. So exactly as mean as that deserves.”
“I feel like I should be jealous that you haven’t dated Nancy in years and he’s still giving you the snot nosed little brother treatment.”
They knock their forehead against Robin’s to transfer their shared brain cell and clue him in on what he’s actually asking. “He’s a shit because I babysat him for three years longer than he probably needed a babysitter. But I’ll gladly transfer ownership, once you actually land something more than a lingering mid-afternoon wine bar thing where you both go home sober but out twenty bucks.”
Robin knocks back, “I think whatever bitchy thing you say to him will cement me as the forever favorite.”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
[Stevie]: didn’t even have to pull my hair up in a messy bun to get the y/n treatment
[Stevie]: when i get they try to anna todd me i want you to write the book
[Favorite Wheeler]: i want an autograph, 0 details and to get to be the one to tell Dustin why you turn on post notifications for your favs
[Stevie]: if this works, you can officiate the wedding
[Favorite Wheeler: [Img]
[Favorite Wheeler]: Move this to the dms before you both get canceled.
[Favorite Wheeler]: And I’m happy for you or whatever
[Stevie]: thanks, kid
[Stevie]: if it wasn’t for your 8th grade wattpad fanfiction I might not have known how to handle this
