the.shire.is.burning

The last thing Shane processes before he’s out of his seat, limbs numb, heart fucking trembling: the last thing Shane sees, in unforgiving digital zoom, is the barest glimpse of the light in Ilya’s eyes not going dark, not snuffing out, not fading away.

No: just…ceasing. Gone.

He’s tripping to the screen at the other end of the room—he’d had a few days to play with, the weather unpredictable enough he could consider attributing any team absences on getting caught in a storm, a course of excuses he’d have never even considered when his priorities were unrecognizable versus the now, but now he’d wanted to wait for his fiancé in a hotel room he’d booked for them, just outside the city proper, close enough to the arena but far enough that it felt intentional, not just convenient, in the direction Ilya would already be going to drive home, not to hide in stolen moments like the hotel had reminded him of in Anaheim but to savor what they had now, to treasure the moments they could make, thousand and millions and billions more to be grateful to keep, to thank each other for with lips and bodies and words, because Shane had sworn to himself he was going to be better with the words, if he had the chance at a forever with this man he was going to fucking use his words to cherish him as he deserved; but now.

Now, in this moment, the distance, no matter its intent, tremors though him, quakes in the certainty, the proof that it’s still not enough, that he should be there in person, next to the ice and running whether he’s allowed to or not, to Ilya’s side, to see his face, to, to…

Shane’s tripping to the screen, heart stuck in his throat and thrashing to get out but Shane’s lungs are frozen, he can’t fucking breathe, his whole weight braced on his hands at either side of the television, staring, begging:

Get up. Stand up. Be okay, be okay, be okay—

It’s standard that the cameras cut when an injury is of genuine concern, of course, and the Centaurs have closed ranks already, taken to the ice as a loyal barricade for their fallen captain as the med team scrambles, and as much as Shane appreciates the discretion, the respect for his heart and soul sprawled, lifeless—

No. No.

But before the footage redirects entirely, before there’s nothing to be gleaned between the skates of a tested-and-tried, genuinely loyal team protecting their captain, Shane sees the thing that undoes him. A thing he didn’t even consider, or else, his brain hadn’t had the bandwidth to run with on its own steam, not yet—it’s the last thing he gets a glimpse of. Three blinks’ worth, if that.

The med team, dropping alongside where Shane can just make out the shape of his world behind all the legs and pads, with…not the normal med cart. Or else, not just, and either way, the point of focus is clear.

It’s a crash cart.

And the AED is being unloaded at a frantic pace, and it looks like someone’s moving to cut away the shirt, pulling at the collar and why, why do they need a fucking defibrillator for Ilya—

They switch the broadcast to a replay, which is maybe the most heinous and offensive thing Shane’s even seen, even felt like acid not just at the back of his throat but running down his throat and lurching in his gut, pooling in his chest to eat away at everything in him he’s done so much to supposedly optimize, to train to peak performance and for fucking what, useless and inadequate and pointless, absolutely pointless in the face of what matters, in trying to keep the only thing any of it was worth being strong for, being enough for.

In the end: Shane isn’t. Shane can’t. Shane failed the man he loved again, and again, and again even when he tried because his trying was pitiful, he was less-than-useless, he had lost—

Maybe it was never a game with a scoreboard, or races with stopwatches. Maybe it was always just the question, the only question: can you keep a love so big when it comes to you, reaches for you, no matter how little you deserve it?

Shane’s knees buckle without warning, then, for the trajectory of his thoughts and the removal of even the slightest hint of his Ilya from his sight through the screen, and then the slow-motion reminder of what it looked like as the love of his life, the footage in half-speed of the moments in which Shane had stopped…being—his time of death called in high-definition.

He feels like he’s drowning, he feels like he’s going to throw up not the bile in his stomach but his heart in tatters and shreds, fuck.

Fuck.

And so his knees give, and he hits the thin hotel carpeting similarly without warning half-a-second later: or maybe there just didn’t need to be any warning, here, for this. Maybe there’s only one result to be had, here, and it’s Shane following the soul-rending lead of the man he loves more than life, or air, and fuck, fuck, so much more than goddamn hockey, how had he been blind enough, idiotic enough to even pretend to himself there was a comparison, a question, a hesitation, not a doubt for what he’d choose but the very idea that there could be a choice at all—

He’d thought Ilya was gone, just weeks ago, on the proof of goodbye messages and what-ifs—and Shane had never felt closer to what it was to die, he was sure of it.

And he’d been a fucking fool, to so much as think that that feeling had anything on watching the man he loved drop on live television, strings cut and life gone from his brilliant-blazing eyes, the eyes Shane had fallen for in less than a heartbeat—and then, and then: the feeling of watching medical professionals on the ice scrambling to apparently restart the heartbeat that gave Shane’s own any reason, any value, any worth in this world at all, which it didn’t, it couldn’t now, and was tripping and racing and pounding and railing frantic for it under his ribs, for losing its purpose, losing its why, losing everything that makes it up from the cells, sparks its electrical currents because Shane’s heart isn’t just Ilya’s.

Shane’s heart is Ilya. If there’s anything he’s known for far too many years to have gone unsaid so fucking long, it’s that every chamber of his heart is crafted from strong hands that touch Shane like he’s previous, the arch of his arteries drawn in the pattern of soft curls that Shane breathes best buried in, the blood of him filtered first through Ilya’s veins to feel like its something his own body can glean anything viable from at all: his heart is Ilya.

And if Ilya’s heart has ceased its perfect thrumming, then, then Shane, he, it’s, there’s nothin—

Oh. Oh, god.

Oh god, he’d said all he wanted was to reach out and feel Ilya’s heartbeat, when he thought he’d lost him before, didn’t he? When he was idiot enough to have waited at all to go to him, to see him, to touch him and feel him and know: too little, too small, too lukewarm, too late, and still he’d pressed to that chest on instinct, by rote the moment he could, and now—

And now.

He clamors to his feet on the same instinct, he realizes in-motion—pure terror, absolute razed-raw desperation: he needs his heart. He needs to know if he still has a heart—

He doesn’t process how much time has passed, notices in the periphery that the game’s off, no one’s back on the ice, generic adverts for various upcoming events, in the league and for the arena, just filtering through: the only thing that land for Shane is that whatever’s happened, it’s looking like it was bad enough they’re not rushing the resumption of play, maybe they don’t have any intention to, because, because…

There’s a pan-over of the ice and Shane thinks it’s stock footage, barely registers but then: he sees motion.

The team colors in the background match today. Oh.

Oh god—

Which, if that’s live: Ilya’s not there. The whole Centaurs bench is empty, and fuck, what the fuck’s going on, where, where is…

Think, he tells himself, bangs the heel of his palm viciously against the center of his forehead. Think: he’s gone.

Shane’s stomach drops, his chest caves, he—

No. No: think.

Where are they taking him, Shane needs to know that, he needs to know where Ilya’s gone, where his heart’s left to be—he needs to know what they’re doing, what’s happening, is he, is he—

Shane feels the pressure of his palm in the backs of his eyes, not worse that the build-up there of grief that hasn’t spilled yet, he’s not sure why, this is so much worse than last time, than the long-endless minutes of a plane maybe-crashing, of last words; this is worse because Shane saw, with his own eyes, and the world was reporting it, reacting to it as fact, when before it was all about what they didn’t know until Ilya was there, his voice in Shane’s ear, his face on the phone, him, him, it’s…

Shane needs to know where Ilya is. He needs to know what’s going on.

He doesn’t know his destination when he tears out of the room, toward the stairwell because the elevator’s gonna be too slow, too tight, too much—

He sprints down a flight, knows he’s at least ten stories up, doesn’t care, because he does know his destination: Ilya. Always Ilya.

He just needs to find out the real-world coordinates of his home, his lodestar, his rhythm, his reason: how can he find…

Hayes.

He has Hayes’ number from camp, he can try, he can try—

He barely registers opening the new message before he’s sent the words, even if he can barely make out the screen:

SH: Tell me where they’re taking him.

Shane makes it down two more flights before he gets a response:

WH: who is this

He doesn’t have time for niceties, or introductions, reminders. Who he is doesn’t matter.

He’s reminded, all too clearly, of a thought he’d mostly brushed aside once he’d heard Ilya’s voice after the plane—who is Shane Hollander, without Ilya Rozanov?

He hadn’t wanted to dwell on what even asking the question meant, then. As he stumbles down more stairs and tries to type at the same time, he knows it’s not about what the answer is.

It’s about the fact that there isn’t one.

There is no Shane Hollander worth having in the cosmos without an Ilya Rozanov to love, to hold, to feel in his chest bolder and brighter and stronger and louder than his own heart alone had ever known how to before, before. Without.

It’s so transparent, so offensively unmistakable for how Shane’s not just ignored it—there are parts of this he’s pushed down, put off for later, but this; it wasn’t like that for this—but for Shane to have missed that none of it mattered, none of it could possibly add up not just to something worth having, but to something, anything, period, without Ilya….

He swallows hard, makes himself tap the screen:

SH: Please tell me he’s okay. Please, Hayes.

He’s trembling, flying blind down the steps, losing his footing every few stairs and almost tumbling, but he can’t feel it, he can’t care about it because he still doesn’t know if he’s already a goddamn corpse just waiting for rigor mortis to set in—

WH: the team will make a statement

Shane blinks; does Wyatt think he’s press, or someone trying to get a…a scoop on the way Shane’s heart is hanging in a balance he can’t read the measure of, but knows will destroy him wholly and utterly and irreversibly, the moment it tips for good?

The moment he either sees Ilya, still breathing, or—

WH: fucking vulture

And Shane can’t think to push, to try and reason, to deny that he’s trying to sell a story to the highest bidder for clicks and views, to remind this man that they know each other at the very least: no.

No, Shane is stuck on the words.

Vulture.

Vultures…that feed on the dead—

Shane tastes bile, thick and burning at the back of his mouth and he chokes, eyes burning as he tries to, to—

If the phone hadn’t fallen from his trembling fingers, he might have thrown it; not for anger, entirely for the need to be rid of it, of proof, of deeper reasons to believe the voice in his own mind telling him it’s too late, he’s gone, he’s lost, Shane couldn’t, Shane can’t…

Shane can’t fucking breathe.

He tips over, only just managing to grasp the railings in the stairwell, panting, lungs an inferno, flames licking at the carrion of the heart curled rotten in between. Vultures.

They could feast on the pair of them, him and his Ilya—they could be together one last time like that, maybe, maybe—

Safe in your heart, Ilya had believed at what he thought was the very end, the time Shane should have learned his lesson, should have embraced everything he’d felt at the very end from his side, from his chest—

But Shane’s heart isn’t safe; Shane’s heart is a fucking minefield, he can’t…

If, somehow, the impossible happens twice, and Shane gets to live because the heart of him in the man he loves gets to stay: the only thing Shane is going to strive for as his goal in life is going to be making his heart the safest fucking place for the both of them to tangle together, to clutch each other like the world’s ending and never, ever let go.

Of all the goals and aims and desires Shane’s pitted himself again, set his eye on and shot for in the stars: it boils down to this, and this alone. If he gets another chance—only his heart. Only for Ilya.

Only them.

He startles, belatedly, processing the slam of the door echoing a number of flights above him; he’ll need to move.

He can’t. He’ll have to.

He can’t.

Ilya’s heart might not be moving in this world, how can he he move—

Footsteps bounce nearer, nearer, and Shane doesn’t know what possesses him, what powers of composure make his hand reach for the phone he’d let slip, makes him wholly numb to the way the crack in the case slices his palm paper-thin and slow to bleed—useless heart, twitching its last; he doesn’t know what power overtakes him, makes his fingers shake just slightly, just finely enough for just enough seconds to open Uber and book the quickest ride he can find to the nearest hospital, on the hope, the blind hope that Ilya’s okay enough he doesn’t need a bigger campus, a more specialized trauma bay; he books what he can find which, even this far out of the metro hub, is somehow still a 15-minute wait.

That’s too long.

That’s too long, because Shane’s heart won’t survive that long, not knowing if Ilya’s is still beating—

He can be faster. He can…

His fingers miss the Maps app five times before he gets it open, and the autocomplete screws him over three more before he gets ‘hospitals near me’ to bring up the best shot he’s got, going in blind: but he has to. He has to go somewhere.

He’s dying, he has to do…something.

Shane has to find Ilya, so he can figure out if he’s just dying, or if he’s already been dead since that body hit the ice.

Nothing about the choices he’d made in the last months, the last years, the last fucking decade: nothing has been enough or done enough or made his heart enough to keep Ilya—his love, his only, his everything—safe. Ilya believed in Shane’s heart, and Shane, he’s, it’s…

He can’t change what he’s missed, where he’s stepped wrong. But if the things he’s put first in practice, if not in his soul; if the rules he’d been living by so meticulously, in exchange for loving with everything he had like he fucking should have—if all the sacrifices in the most abysmally wrong places, all this time, have given him anything of worth at all?

He’s got stamina out the ass, and the hospital’s only three kilometers away.

So he fucking runs.

>>> next?

✨or: on ao3✨

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @scoops-aboy86 @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups 

First, the basics. The things he knows protect against, or at least fend off, a lot of the worst that the Upside Down has thrown at them so far.

Heat—he can’t blowtorch Eddie (though that sounds kinda sexy in a different context), but he can bring, like, warm clothes. Socks, gloves. Maybe a blanket. Just…cozy shit.

Then of course, music—maybe he tests the mettle of the feds on the remains of the Munson trailer to see if they’d cleared it out entirely yet—almost.

But cassettes were apparently last-tier concerns, and Steve takes everything he can carry in the dead of night, doesn’t bother reading names or titles, just chucks it all into an old backpack and hightails it out between half-assed guard shifts. Sloppy.

He’s not gonna take for granted they’ll stay that sloppy, what with the regular influx of troops with every ‘supply delivery’—sure they bring emergency stuff for the hospital, and food and shit, but then the delivery-soldiers don’t leave. And new ones come next, and do the same. Build up their ranks.

Steve’s not smart, but he’s not blind.

Next, he dives in to the box in the basement that has the whole of his wardrobe from his swim captain days—he needs to be better equipped for the dive through the water, needs to make the swim more streamlined, and the landing weight focused on what he carries, the supplies, not his own fucking soaked wardrobe. Speedo, swim trunks, the weird swim-shirt thing his dad had insisted he have to train in the cold, when he’d still believed Steve could have pulled off a scholarship. Water shoes that are awkward as fuck and don’t quite fit anymore but: better than nothing, and if he kicks them off once he gets on his feet where he’s headed, he’s no worse off barefoot than he usually is down there.

Third, he starts looking for waterproof storage he can carry on the way down: shit that’s not conspicuous to get his hands on. Ziplocs. Tupperware in his kitchen he’s never used but he’s gonna test for all the fancy claims it makes about keeping shit fresh. Anything remotely airtight. Then he sorts it all by size: for transporting, and for what he needs to bring.

(And then: yeah, of course he starts experimenting for…hydrothetically, if something large—not specifically that monster-cock Steve had felt against his own dick, but like that monster-cock—because…well.

Because.

He begins with the obvious in his mouth, as that’s his safest bet to start. Tries a banana: easy, like, insultingly easy actually. Goes for two: weird that they’re separate, but he appreciates the stretch of his mouth, knows the motion for how he put both time and real focus into eating girls out for years—he thinks that’s also what makes him start with this: he’s not a stranger to head.

Three is a mess, not least because he can’t hold them together well enough, fucking bananas.

He gets a really big squash thing the next day at Melvad’s, and that works better. Aches, but works. And is…close in size, ish, to three bananas.

Right. Didn’t even have to crack his jaw for that.

Still: he’s not stupid enough to think the interloper in Eddie’s body is going to necessarily stop (or start, for itself) with ‘obvious’, and certainly doesn’t seem to give a shit about ‘safest’.

But he’s also not a stranger to…do you just call it ass-stuff, with a guy? Whatever: Steve’s not a total stranger, just only knows, y’know. The one side of the equation. There are some freaky ladies in Hawkins, is the point, they just don’t advertise it.

So yeah, Steve works himself open as best he can in the shower one night, until long after the hot water’s gone which almost never even happens, and sure it’s a little weird, and he thinks there’s probably something about it that is better when someone else is involved, or else, at least better when someone knows what they fuck they’re doing, because all Steve ever did was open a chick up to fit his dick, and if that’s the same on this end of the stick, he needs…

Well. Yeah.

It’s fine, though, is what he means. By the fifth night, he’s got all four fingers in, though it’s not exactly awesome. It’s also not quite as big as the monster-cock—which is only a hyperthetical example for reference, of course—but. It’s better than three, and Steve figures shape matters. One big…thing versus the bumps and dips of multiple things trying to compensate is going to be different. Like with the bananas.

Because here’s the deal, and he hadn’t told Rob, largely because he hadn’t been one-hundred-percent certain, just suspected, just mostly-sure: but Steve has liked the look of guys for…for as long as he can remember, honestly. He just genuinely thought all people saw all people as, y’know. Potentially attractive.

Which, honestly: how was he supposed to know the obvious fucking answer was considered the wrong one?

Because objectively, all people are potentially attractive. Like, if they weren’t then the typical girls-who-like-guys and guys-who-like-girls would only have one-half that’s attractive, right? If not all-halves can be attractive? That’s stupid, and not true, and Steve honestly didn’t often think of himself as smarter than other people but on this one? Despite picking up real quick that it was a thing he should keep quiet about—because when he’d mentioned Harrison Ford was smokin’ in Empire Strikes Back when he saw it back before high school and kings and keg stands and shit got weird, and his friends had looked at him weird and said ’what, you a fag, Harrington?’, and Steve had always been quick on his feet with that sort of social-clout kinda thing, specifically, and arguably only that kinda thing, but he’d been quick to flip it to an equally true and applicable point: the way he wooed the princess, largely by ignoring her especially when she leaned hard into the feelings stuff, super cool, definitely worth taking onboard as a strategy with girls moving forward, and viola: Steve didn’t even have to wait until ninth grade to become a legend when it came to women; he just had to be real invested in watching Harrison fucking Ford enough to remember a plot point the others had brushed off—but yeah, he’d figured out early on that, unless he wanted to make the struggle of it his whole-ass personality and also the fight of his every goddamn day?

The part about girls and guys naturally having an equal shot at being hot was something he kept to himself from that day on, and learned over time from experience why that was the most…sustainable move, within the high-school food chain, but yeah.

Steve’s still one-hundred percent sure that he’s the one who’s right, on this. Like: he is absolutely correct, here. Yeah.)

But that’s the basic plan, that has him landing on ill-fitting, too-soft-soled shoes that are at least not his bare fucking feet, on the cracked ground of the dead lake in another fucking world.

He gets just enough time to drop his gallon ziploc to the side behind what he…thinks might be a well-scavenged demobat carcass—which, if he hadn’t seen Eddie breathing just days ago, hadn’t felt Eddie’s heart pounding beneath his touch, Steve probably would have had to swallow his own vomit for the way the sight would have twisted his stomach, torn at everything in his chest; now, though, because Steve can fucking drum that pulse-line through his fingers on command the memory’s so clear, burned gorgeous into his fucking muscles and bones: now Steve just screws up his face at it, and maybe thinks for a second on how it’s weird as shit that it doesn’t smell, that everything just smells of the general rot ofhere.

But he drops the bag and has enough time still to take a beat and note if it worked—seems…not-soaked on the inside, that’s good—before he’s knocked sideways and pinned to the ground.

At least this time he’s generally expecting it.

Steve fixes his gaze on the eyes staring down at him, wills himself not to fall prey—ha, prey, like how the growly-thing in Eddie and maybe also Eddie, maybe—to the heavy, heated breaths hitting his skin, the heaving chest knocking his own, the enormous fucking bulge pressing into his own still-too-cold dick to do much but imagine responding (thanks, Lover’s Lake: which sounds sarcastic in Steve’s head but he genuinely means it, he needs to keep his head—or else, the right head—for a little bit longer before the definition of ‘right’ can shift accordingly).

First, he needs to look.

Because Steve might not excel at planning and organizing and shit, but he notices people. He’s good at people.

Eddie’s about…halfway there, halfway with Steve, here and now.

And here’s the thing that practicing up for the hypotechnical possibility of encountering the monster-dick that he’d only felt under fabric, previously, the thing that’s even more than the general point that Robin doesn’t know yet about him: Steve’s good at people, at noticing people.

But Steve is uniquely good at noticing Eddie Munson.

It’s not even like a recent thing—like, from the moment Steve had first seen him with his buzzcut and his knobby fucking knees sticking through shreds in the denim, Steve had been…spellbound? Kinda? Something like that, also that sounds like a thing Eddie would say so, whether it’s entirely right or not, Steve’s gonna run with it. He thinks it was those eyes, the way they caught in Steve’s heartbeat at such a formative age and taught it a little, how to move around wanting, reminded him always what it meant to want and not get, not ever have a shot at getting, and it was perpetually heartbreaking, maybe, but it was motivational. Seeing him every fucking day, strutting on tables, sometimes his shirt neck stretched enough by the end of a day, the end of a week to show some of that mouthwatering collarbone, that slutty fucking ink—

Anyway.

Steve had known as long as he can remember that he liked the look of guys. But, after those few days, being close to Eddie, watching him, walking through hell in his vest and feeling his exhale, his voice around the words—big boy—he, like…

Steve thinks, if he’d had the time between thinking he lost the man and finding him again against all odds, maybe a little tangled up with something…other: but if Steve had had time to really talk to Robin before he dove to the gate and broke open his brain and his rabbit-fucking-heart all at once?

He’d have told Robin everything. But it had only been a few days, but the days themselves, and then the way he’d fallen apart under the skin in every way imaginable without any justification on the outside of any of it: Steve didn’t just like the 

look of guys. He…

His heart got involved, too, is the thing. More than involved. Enmeshed. Entrenched. Enraptured.

His whole fucking heart—

But it’d started, he thinks, with the eyes, all those years ago: and they’re the same eyes he’s staring at and finding Eddie inside, finding enough of Eddie inside, because that’s what he’d picked up last time—the color of those eyes, and the feelings in them, and the same for that voice. That’s the tell.

That’s how Steve knows whether Eddie’s in the driver’s seat, or more just a passenger, or maybe even sometimes fighting over the wheel.

And now it’s a fight, there’s a battle, there’s something feral beyond carnal wanting in that gaze and so Steve…Steve gives in. Doesn’t fight over anything, let alone the wheel.

(As if he was going to even if those eyes had been bright fucking red and red alone—)

“You come here again,” and oh, okay: the growling is the most pronounced part now, despite that blood-red-turning-rust-in-the-air swirling in those headlight-stretched eyes.

But then, again: Steve doesn’t know what Eddie would sound like in similar circumstances all on his own, and his gut tells him to trust the dance of the two, to trust that Eddie won’t be lost entirely, won’t let him get lost entirely—

He’s not sure what makes him trust Eddie Munson at all, to that extent, but…fuck, he does.

“Unasked,” the voice hisses, a little less growl, but still not…not just Eddie; “you return here unasked, a prize,” and the tongue that slithers out to lick those plush fucking lips, Jesus fucking Christ is that distracting as shit and goddamnit: he’s not cold enough that he doesn’t start to chub up for it.

And the smirk that confirms yeah, there’s not a fucking possibility in hell it goes unnoticed, with Eddie straddling him like he is—the smirk pulls back against those fucking fangs on either side and…yeah.

Yeah, Steve’s cock twitches for that, too. Fucking sue his ass.

“I came for my friend,” Steve grits out, fights a weirdly inseparable urge to spit in that face or surge up and kiss it, get bloodied by those perfectly pointed teeth.

“Your friend?”

The question’s spat like it has two layers, octaves, whatever they’d be called. Two lines of existing: this has got those. There’s the mocking, taunting line that’s growled, and the soft, curious, maybe even hopeful line that’s harder to find but impossible to ignore, once it’s known.

Steve grasps for that second part, and holds on fucking tight.

Which is good, because what comes next is a flash of neon red in the eyes that narrow at him before they wrestle back to blood-toned, followed by a growl that has no give, no grace:

“You have no friends here, Paladin,” it snarls, and Steve feels it shake his blood a little, the force, but he makes himself ignore it, makes himself cling and sink into the softer question—your friend?—and the gentle wistfulness around it all, the…Eddie-ness of it.

He loses himself in that as the body above him bucks hard into his hips.

“And I told you before,” the growl continues as knees rock back and forth up Steve’s middle, his chest, that monster-bulge only stopped by the fact of Steve’s chin; “your mouth has better occupations,” and yeah. Yeah, okay, Steve was actually right and smart about shit this time: it’s gonna start with the mouth. He’s still sore from the squash, but he’s not unfamiliar with strength training, from his varsity days: he knows he’s not sore enough to have hurt himself.

Which means he can push a little further now, if he needs to.

And he knows he will need to.

“This time, I will not be denied,” and Steve doesn’t know when he fucking blinked, doesn’t know how he even managed to blink here, like this: but apparently he did because, okay.

Okay, so. That’s what the monster-cock looks like. Up close. In the flesh, not just a big bulge.

He doesn’t even have to totally cross his eyes to follow how it’s ready to flop on his lips, it’s broad enough that he needsboth eyes, holy fuck.

But: he did manage the squash. He can do this.

His eyes flicker up, and the brown and bright-red as still mingled, warring in the gaze trained upon him and: yeah.

He can do this. For Eddie.

He parts his lips before the tip’s forced in, and is fucking ready.

(Or like, as ready as he can be, he’s about to suck a monster-cock.)

The slit goes at the head cuts both ways, like a little plus-sign, and that’s…it’s like a cross between a Steve’s own dick and maybe the pucker of an asshole and Steve…it’s like an instinct, which is cannot possibly actually be because what fucking instinct would a person have in response to a monster-cock aside from run, abort, get away, which Steve is proving he does not have: but it’s kinda instinct to fucking, just…

Suck it like a straw, from just the head?

And that’s not only one-hundred-percent manageable, but apparently not what was expected, if the full-body shudder—and fuck, Steve had maybe failed to appreciate the full breadth and heft of that body before it was damn-near straddling his goddamn neck, making it hard to breathe but kinda in a…floaty sort of way—but that’s not what was expected. Those eyes flash chocolate and oh.

Oh: point to Harrington, fuck yeah.

And Steve could wait. Should, arguably, but.

He’d practiced.

The full girth is beyond him, at least for starters, but that doesn’t take him out of the game, no way in fuck.

Steve Harrington has never in his whole goddamn life jumped into a game in order to lose.

So he thinks about what he might like from a girl-mouth or a guy-mouth in his wildest, raunchiest fantasies, the ones that go further than he’d ever brought up even with the chicks who were into anal.

He takes to the hard bulge of the biggest vein he can get his lips on, kisses then licks the line, then sucks with the aim to bruise, nips like he wants to break that skin on accident, taste that blood as it pulses and it’s big enough on this absolute ginormous fucking dick that Steve thinks he can feel it, the beat of it, and holy fuck: Steve’s never had his mouth on anyone’s junk before but good goddamn, that’s hot.

That’s really fucking hot.

And the thighs that are now framing him, and Steve…Steve doesn’t think this is the same as what he’s familiar with as ‘face-sitting’ but it’s close and he thinks it’s probably about the same in end-result, save that instead of an asscrack he’s got pubes tickling his nose and taint rubbing the five-o’clock shadow bristling under his chin, so Steve knows it, it’s undeniable: if there’d been shuddering, before?

Now it’s full-on trembling. It’s quivering. It’s shivering in those glorious thighs and maybe Steve bites a little for real to pull that cock where he wants it to go as best he’s able, nudges just so that he can lean into the give of that pillow-plush fucking thigh, Jesus—

“More,” Steve gasps, licking one of the other popped-out veins on this otherworldly dick, it’s maybe a shame that this is his first rodeo of this particular flavor because…he thinks he might end up with unrealistic expectations once this is gone: “more.”

Because this will be gone. The whole point here is to make sure that it’s gone and Eddie is safe—not exclusively but definitely including whatever’s warring for his body, for his mind, for his control of himself—and that he gets to come home.

“Your friend,” the breathy growl is mocking, makes it clear who’s got control of the vocal cords just now; “chose well,” and what the fuck is that supposed to mean? It can’t mean what Steve—

“Delicious and talented,” and it’s almost approving, almost conceding that Steve is worth at least his mouth’s talents—he’s not sure it’s something he should take pride in, the approval of whatever demon is trying to take Eddie over, but fuck if it doesn’t zing through his nerves, just.

Score Harrington. Up by two.

In the meantime, though: Steve’s able to move that cock where he wants it, to lap and suckle and graze his teeth against one vein, the other, back and forth as he rests his head on a glorious fucking thigh, holy fucking shit, and when he is able to breath in this vaguely-suffocating position it’s close enough to the crease of that same perfect thigh, all sweaty-musk and man and other but mostly Eddie because if there’s something those last days, those last days that aren’t going to be last anymore: of all that Steve got from those days, good and bad and revelatory and heartbreaking, he finally learned what Eddie smelled like. Not just a guess in passing.

A certainty.

And he’s not giving that up. He can’t.

(But also: Harrington 3, Growly Thing/Eddie…Steve’ll give him 1. Steve still wins but like…this fucking monster-cock.

Seriously, though.)

“Eddie,” Steve’s saying, kinda mindlessly as he kisses up that vein again, a little fucking surprised that he’s not being forced further, to open his mouth without any regard to whether it breaks him because frankly, that’s what he’d expected, and he hadn’t even practiced this shit he’s doing because, mainly, well: squashes have no veins, but; “fuck, Eddie,” and Steve keeps going as he reaches the base this time, swirls his tongue around the root because he starts mouthing greedy, wanton at the too-big-and-swollen-to-just-call-them-balls hanging low and heavy, drooped down even as they’re drawn up tight for the simple fact of their fucking ginormous size.

Eddie—and whoever’s in there with him—wasn’t expecting that, either, if the sharp in-breath hissing around the way those teeth don’t close completely with the fangs, if the way that breath catches more than once on the inhale, if Steve turns his head for a second and catches the pulse near the vein under his lips and can’t even count along for how fast it runs: well, shit.

Steve’s giving himself four points on the board, now, he doesn’t think there’s any logical argument to be had to the contrary, really.

“You like that?” Steve purrs a little, indulgent and maybe even a little playful, his voice something he’s never actually heard come out of his mouth before but hell: not like it’s the first thing his mouth’s been involved in tonight that’s brand fucking new.

He’s not opposed to it, any more than he’d opposed to…any of the rest of it.

But the opinion…isn’t shared.

Because the thighs around him shift from a comfort to a cage, and he chokes when the cock in his mouth is shovedforward, not never in a way he could take if he had any world’s most monster-cock-sized mouth, because it’s not from the tip, it’s mindless and just from the side, and Steve gets a little crushed by the weight of those fucking balls, Jesus Christ—

“You do not speak,” the growling is goddamn furious, but it’s not just a level of anger Steve hasn’t heard yet—it’s untethered, it’s out-of-control.

And for better or worse, Steve caused that.

5-1, Harrington. And y’know, he’s not backing off while he’s got that commanding of a lead.

No matter what an unfettered fang monster means for his…long-term wellbeing and shit, because, fuck.

If short-term wellbeing had been Steve’s concern, he would never have risked coming here at all. If long-term well being is at stake, he needs Eddie.

He needs Eddie, whole, to come home.

So he makes his tongue push against the length trying to crowd between his teeth, keeps said teeth open just so that they drag a little extra hard against what has to be oversensitized skin by now, that and then some, and goes back to what he knows works.

He sucks that skin—maybe not the double-slit star or a thing at the tip, but still—like a fucking milkshake.

“Steve,” comes the broken whine from the body more-than-half smothering him and oh. Oh.

The growly fucking doesn’t use Steve’s name. And that voice…

Steve doesn’t have to try to find the eyes above him to know that voice didn’t have even a hint of a growl.

That was Eddie.

And if he had any doubts, as soon as it registers fully and Steve’s whole body feels alight with it, the knowing of it: as soon as he’s ablaze with the fact that yes, yes Eddie was here for this, felt this, no matter who or what he had to share it with—if he had any doubts whatsoever?

The way that body goes from suffocating him to flinging itself away, much like the last time but wilder, more rapid and violent and like tearing through flesh just to bleed: that would have snuffed out any question.

Steve, though: Steve’s gasping, for the first time in his life grateful for the stagnant thickness of the Upside Down’s excuse for air but then, also not, because at least the little gasps of anything he’d had before had tasted of Eddie—but Steve’s gasping, and boneless on the dead-lake floor, cracked as he feels but he…he doesn’t just feel a little broken the fuck open.

Because more than even that: Steve feels fucking victorious, and he grins to himself with a palm to his chest, choking a laugh as he still gasps to try to calm his pulse—

Five to one, motherfucker. Game: Harrington.

He honestly can’t wait for the rematch.

🖤

✨watch for what comes next ??? >>>✨

<<< or go back to the beginning

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @scoops-aboy86 @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups 

It’s…it’s odd, maybe, probably, because Steve only fights for a few seconds once he’s on his back—he could throw the frame that pins him to the ground with the right cant of his hips but he…

He’s let enough girls ride him to recognize the shape—not exact, these are meatier, if only just—but the general fit—again, not the same, these are…these somehow fit right and Steve doesn’t know what to make of that, or even what ‘right’ actually means—

Point is: those are thighs around him. That’s a human being on top of him.

And when Steve blinks enough times and the face looking down at him doesn’t clear away, doesn’t fade: well, after that, Steve can’t fucking breathe, let alone consider fighting back.

(Or wanting to fight back, which, again: doesn’t know what to make of that, doesn’t have the energy to learn, so—)

“Look who’s descended from his castle on high.”

Eddie Munson looks…mostly like he did the last time Steve saw him, save he’s much less…pried open. Much more animated and moving and breathing for all the breaths Steve himself can’t seem to take and that’s, that’s impossible—

He didn’t realize he was lifting up, magnetized by the sheer presence of the man he was here just to bring back the husk of, until a firm grip, the sharp bite of nails pushes him hard against the ground, then braces as Eddie looms over Steve’s torso, running his nose up from somewhere near Steve’s stomach to lick up the line of Steve’s neck and okay, sure.

What the fuck—

“You were always,” and Steve stills, frozen, which means he feels the jackhammering of his heart all the more likely to rip its own hole between dimensions after it cracks his ribs and jumps out to destroy other, stronger targets as Eddie drags his opens lips around Steve’s jaw: “mouth-wateringly gorgeous, weren’t you?”

And…Steve doesn’t have the energy to think about it, so it’s just a fact that his hips twitch, start to move upward less to buck off and more to buck into—

“Jesus H., but how I wanted you. For years. Years, and I hated myself,” and the growl in Eddie’s voice feels like a thing Steve’s never heard before, not just from Eddie but from anyone: something animal but also otherworldly in it and Steve’s not sure if he’s frozen for the oddity of it, or if he’s frozen because the blood in him is…not rushing to his head, or, well, not to his brain.

Fucking…fuck.

“Of all the pretty straight boys to fall for,” there’s a receding of the growl, then, something tender and marveling and aching that Steve doesn’t know how to take, how to process, how to make sense of how Eddie’s breath on his slowly-drying skin where he’s wet from the lake tingles through his whole fucking body, then sets him on fucking fire when Eddie drags the blunt backs of his fingernails up Steve’s neck along the near-vibrating line of the artery below the skin, and then, fuck, fuck, but the nails sure as shit aren’t blunt, Steve knows that for one reason or another that he should probably think about diving into a little because it was a lot in a very short span of time but Steve had watched those hands, the dull sparkle of those rings and the nails above them have been chewed down and uneven, not fucking claws which Eddie seems to have developed now, somehow.

Steve…maybe his jackhammer-heart skips a beat, misses the mark a few times. Maybe.

Which obviously means nothing. Not a single thing. Nope.

Nope.

“Why are you here?”

It starts as Eddie, or as the newly-growl-laced Eddie speaking the words, curious and still kinda warm, a sound Steve hadn’t realized he’d grown so attached to until the blow of it now, when something inside him had registered and settled in mourning of never hearing it again—what the fuck—the blow of it from inside his chest like the tiniest birth of a star, burning and violent and gorgeous: it starts as that, because there’s no missing what it feels like.

Which also means there’s no missing when that voice shifts, slow at first:

“I don’t mean anything to you,” and it comes out almost confused, but with more growl than before, and it ends on a fucking snarl; “I don’t even know you,” and it rumbles, and Steve thinks…there’s something to the way that sound wants to latch and light a fire somewhere Steve didn’t know was in him for the awakening, but…can’t quite swing it. Isn’t quite right to manage it.

Close, sure. Very close.

But not quite.

“You do,” Steve swallows; there’s an undercurrent of a bottle to his neck in the way his breath catches, caught then, didn’t feel so important at the time but felt like there was more in it now, when that Steve is gasping against a sort of heaviness that spreads like a blood stain from the center of his chest, but come inside and in every direction and he, he is…

“Not as well as I’d have liked, but,” and that had been a bigger deal than he’d expected, hadn’t it, that had been a regret he didn’t measure quite correctly until here, now, knowing it’s no longer needed because:

“But you’re here, you’re alive—”

“Am I?”

The question growls in something like a taunt, and asks uncharacteristically small and cowed, scared but weirdly trusting to be turned now on Steve, after just having been accused of Eddie meaning nothing to him, or Eddie not knowing him at all.

Steve doesn’t know if it’s indignation, or maybe desperation because now that’s it’s been spoken, the doubt that should probably be stronger in Steve already but only roars to life because Eddie asks and now all Steve can feel is his hand on Eddie’s bloodied chest barely able to really feel skin, just the tacky slip of red, red, red—

It’s maybe all that and something else entirely, or nerves or need or want that moves his hand to that chest again, stretched over him where he reaches, slapping it palm-open and pressing almost violently, surprised a little that the heart he feels—and he does, he fucking feels it this time and knows he didn’t before but it’s undeniable now—he’s surprised it’s nearly a match for his own, wild and wicked and bruising, predatory almost on the swell, open-jawed for blood but so full of need—for comfort, for certainty, for reassurance, maybe for hope—in the clench and fucking hell, Steve wants it.

And what the fuck does that say about him, what does that even mean—

“You fucking are,” he meets Eddie’s eyes and the dusk-umber there is pure and molten and flashing only with feeling: still the fear, but there’s disbelief there, and again with the hoping, and the way the chest poised above Steve gives a little, the arms braces around him shifting so that Eddie’s weight presses with intent into Steve’s touch?

It’s fucking electrifying: a little like lightning, but the kind that’s pure white and ozone, from where they’re from. Where they belong.

“That matter to you?”

Steve frowns. The tone, the difference between the growling and the Eddie—which, now Steve’s curious what Eddie himself would sound like, as in, what’s Eddie’s kind of growl, all on his own? why the hell does Steve care?—but the tone is hard to parse. He doesn’t know for sure who’s asking.

He does know what his response is, regardless:

“The fuck kind of question is that?”

There’s a pause, and Eddie’s arms tremble a little under his weight for just a second before the red is back: the wrong kind of lightning flashing in that gaze.

“Eddie Munson was nothing to you,” and it’s said so fucking aggressively, it’d maybe get him hot if he wasn’t so weirdly, viscerally opposed to the words themselves.

Hot? What the fucking fuck?

“Why come now, Paladin?” and that last word, Steve’s heard that before and is pretty sure it’s from the Douchebags and Dumbasses game that everything about this fucking place gets named after, so whatever this is inside Eddie’s body, the growling-thing: it’s not entirely not Eddie, or else, it’s not just something from here. It’s something…intruding, maybe, not erasing.

And that’s a fucking relief that Steve doesn’t have the oxygen in him to power his brain into figuring out for the strength of it, the overwhelming fucking sense of walking back from the ledge, that kind of existential life-or-death relief, so.

Another thing he’s not figuring out today.

“You are too late,” the growling, vicious thing with Eddie’s face snaps at him, literally, and Steve catches the point of what looks like…like too-sharp canines behind those lips. And Steve…

Steve realizes he’s apparently looked at that mouth enough times to notice that those lips don’t sit quite right, the…the maybe-kinda-fangs don’t let those lips close what Steve seems to know is the right way—

“Eddie?” he asks, kind of lost, kind of unmoored, his voice sounds so fucking small and he’s not even sure what he’s asking for, what he’s expecting—

“Harrington,” and it’s Eddie again, the red in those eyes seeping immediately away, and Eddie sounds fucking terrified and fucking relieved himself, all mashed together, but it’s very clear that somehow Steve is the reason for the latter, the relief, and fuck, that shouldn’t overcome the hesitancy Steve should have and keep steady in the wake of anything even remotely related to the Upside Down, let alone a resurrected Eddie Munson, who might be partially…possessed?

It shouldn’t overcome the smart thing, the hesitation. But it absolutely does. Heady, and heavy but like a fluttering too, like lead-limned wings in his chest, fuck, and Steve…Steve doesn’t know what to do with that.

He’s never felt anything like this, before. Not…not ever.

Fuck.

“Harrington, fuck, Steve, I don’t,” Eddie gasps, chokes, flails but is still kinda hovering above Steve but it’s like his entire posture, his whole energy shifts from caging to just holding himself up, and barely that as his chest starts heaving faster; “it’s, he’s—”

And then his eyes, those gorgeous fucking eyes: they go red. Bright fucking red, and Steve knows before the voice comes—

“Pretty, so very pretty,” it purrs while it still somehow growls, and he knows.

Eddie’s not in the driver’s seat. He’s not gone—Steve doesn’t know how he knows it but he knows it—but he’s not…those aren’t his words. It’s a perversion of his voice around not his words, and that feels like a fucking sin against, like, nature. Against the universe, or something.

“And he comes to me, to us,” the purr seems to catch on ‘to us’, like it’s snagged—like maybe Eddie pulls at the voice, the other thing inside that’s…commandeering him, and like, grabs at the wheel. Veers it off-course.

It kicks something fierce in Steve’s chest, again, to think that Eddie’s…fighting.

(He’s absolutely not going to touch the way that the words themselves, the want, the expectation, the weird…welcome in them, does something wholly fucking other in Steve’s chest and…and elsewhere. Also. Nope.

Not touching that.)

“Comes to us on his own,” the growl gets an edge to it as the face looming over him leans and licks up Steve’s jawline, menacing; possessive. Steve hates it but like, there’s something else he feels about it, too, at the same time.

Something very…else.

“What a prize,” and god-fucking-damnit, Steve shivers, he…he shivers and not away, what the fuck—

“Eddie,” he moans a little as the body on top of him shifts, scoots upward, trajectory unmistakable even if he’s never had a man climb that path before and Steve, he: well.

Like, he…

Steve…Steve could fight. Could make this difficult at least. He knows he could. Maybe (probably, almost definitely) should.

So it’s a choice, one that wins out over whatever hesitations he has in him by a fucking landslide given how his dick’s already hard—he doesn’t know if he wants Eddie (thinks maybe); he doesn’t know if he’s okay with whatever split-personality thing’s happening here with Mr. Growly and his definitely-superior strength because Eddie’s not weak but he’s certainly not rippling and those arms are pretty damn close on that point—he’s not cool with whatever’s causing Eddie’s Jekyll/Hyde shtick but…he’s hard up and without clear dissent from any part of him, he’s over any of the panic about it being a guy or maybe something supernatural or otherworldly because Steve’s tired of pretending there aren’t bigger problems to concern himself with on that front, and goddamnit:

He wants to get off, fucking sue him.

And the fact that it is Eddie Munson’s kinda magical, definitely unfair black-hole eyes, cosmic and riveting staring down at him for a good stretch of whole-heartbeats after Steve says his name, watching and stretched-wide like something to propel himself into and drown?

The fact that that Eddie Munson is alive, no matter what else there is to consider, the fact that Steve fucking felt his heartbeat where it hadn’t been days ago, where Steve had checked and willed it back every way he could imagine: where its absence had cracked something in him he couldn’t name, or maybe wasn’t ready to try, might still not be ready—

The fact that Eddie Munson, no matter what else, is pinning him down and looking ready to devour him, pupils blown nearly past the point of possibility, the rings around the color in his eyes leaning to something almost blood colored, like the evidence of a battle splayed inside: but the fact of Eddie Munson, here and now?

Steve wants this. Wants to feel. Wants to know; wants this proof of knowing. Wants those hands and that body on him, with him, so that maybe…

Maybe Steve won’t be too slow, too weak, too late this time. Maybe he can protect him, save him. Keep him—

(Keep him?)

And maybe the only really clear sense of anything is that the need in Steve, for all those things, all those reasons, probably a million more he can’t sift through or parse out:

Those are bigger than any other thing.

Eddie’s chest is heaving, and he looks fucking ravenous, like maybe whatever else is inside him just now would take the way he’d said ‘mouth-watering’ earlier kinda literally, and Steve’s heartbeat’s less a jackhammer and more a mallet, a sledgehammer even, just pounding, pounding, pounding and maybe the only thing he really understands is that he fucking needs—

“Just don’t fucking kill me, dude,” he gasps and lets his hips rise into Eddie’s where there’s so much heat, so much fullness, so…so fucking muchand Steve doesn’t even let himself blink even as the sensation shorts out his nerves, so he doesn’t miss the way the red around Eddie’s eyes recedes wholly, for just a second, and even if there’s fear in them, there’s so much more care, tenderness even that Steve might not understand for the moment they’re in but can feel like melted caramel, drizzling around his goddamn bones:

“Never,” Eddie gasps it, almost punched out but closer to a vow than feels earned before the black spreads and the red flashes and then those hips grind back fucking hard.

“Motherfuck,” Steve grits out because, holy hell, Steve’s never felt that much pressure, that much weight against his dick that wasn’t intended to fucking hurt, and this doesn’t…this doesn’t not kinda hurt, but it’s not…it’s not that, not quite that and it’s not intended to and Steve has to wonder if the growly-thing wouldn’t care, if Eddie’s holding it back or if this is what moving like this against another man just feels like as a rule.

Which, both possibilities…both possibilities are kinda doing something to him. Multiple things.

On top of what the reality of being humped, and fucking…enthusiastically, in a way that’s never happened to him before. On so many levels.

Not least of which:

“Are you this big,” Steve asks because, maybe it’s like the muscles, maybe whatever the growly thing is has changed other things because holy shit, Eddie could not have sat the fuck down in class with the monster of a dick Steve can feel his own not-insubstantial but, y’know, human-sizedtwitch when the fucking enormous vein alone tracing the underside of it throbs against Steve’s length through pants he knows there’s no way he was wearing when Steve last saw him, if this was trapped inside the whole time.

“Fucking no,” the body undulating against him hisses, sounds kind of horrified at the prospect on top of, well, everything else, and Steve gets that.

Though it would’ve given him a decent excuse to skip P.E. as much as he did, Jesus.

“Quiet,” comes the growling again; “your input is irrelevant,” it’s spat hard enough that the words spray into Steve’s face, buck harsh into Steve’s rock hard cock under his still-wet pants that won’t fucking show how bad he’s leaking even if there was enough light to see, but he is. He knows.

“Your presence is meaningless,” the growl adds, vicious and fucking cruel with it, and Steve…

Steve doesn’t like that. Steve’s probably imagining things, but he feels like something warm and decadent and home flashes, swells like a heartbeat almost for just a second, and in that second?

The home thing is…sad. Resigned. Dejected, and Steve, he can’t…

“Means everything,” Steve mouths just before lips crash onto his, graze with sharp teeth and Steve tries not to think about how he feels regarding how that feels, tries to focus instead on the fanciful idea that if he pushes, if he tries to speak into the mouth looking to map his own, he’ll reach Eddie, straight to the heart of the man that’s beating, that can’t be taken away, or co-opted, or overtaken; it’s gone through too much, and Steve probably only knows the half of it, but he does know it can’t be anything but Eddie’s.

“Eddie, it means every—”

The lips on his pull back, proof that blood had dragged out of the assault in the bright red against the white fangs.

“Your mouth belongs,” the growl is angry, now, like: that’s a sound that can’t be mistaken for anything but anger: “otherwise occupied, Paladin,” and again, that word like an insult when Steve doesn’t know shit but he doesn’t think that’s what it is, and wants to know why it’s even there, save that it means Eddie and that’s more than enough to know for now, more than enough—

And then he’s being straddled tighter, less motion and more force, and the mouth has abandoned him as it pulls back, evaluates, sneers but it feels half-assed, really, because there’s…disgust in the look, in the tone:

“You are tedious,” the growl spreads like poison, something thick and alive somehow: “to force you now would be to break you,” and Eddie’s face is so expressive, but Steve knows somehow that it never looks like this on its own, would never choose to look so…unfeeling, so detached:

“I would not have satisfaction.”

And that expression, that Eddie would never make, goes back to considering, evaluating before a hand reaches out and jerks Steve from the jaw:

“Do you require this bone overmuch?”

And it’s asked, like, seriously. And…

It’s not as if there’s a way to misinterpret what’s being discussed here. And it’s not as if Steve’s never thought about it, because like, doesn’t everyone at least think about stuff like that, like, hypotenusetically? In theory? For science?

And whether the moment’s right for it or not, Steve feels a little fucking insulted; thinks if he tried, and worked at it, he could probably not break his whole ass jaw and manage to take in some of that monster co—

But then: Eddie’s flinging off of Steve with the kind of sandpaper roar Steve thinks he’s only ever heard in a movie, but even more, because it’s real and it feels like it has to do damage to the throat it leaves—and then Eddie’s scrambling, clawing at himself, running, running—

And Steve is boneless on the fucking ground. He didn’t realize how much Eddie’s weight on him, around him, was keeping him from unravelling, losing all control of his limbs as he sprawls, gasping, the only motion other than the heaving of his lungs being the way it feels like his still-pounding heart is vaulting him out of the dirt, leaving him to hit hard as he falls over, and over, and over, and—

Fuck. Fuck, he—

He has no idea what just happened. He doesn’t know where Eddie is—but he felt him, felt his heartbeat, he knows he’s alive; somehow he’s alive.

But aside from that, Steve has no idea about anything, he—

Oh: fuck.

He definitely came in his goddamn pants.

And they’re not nearly wet enough still to make it wholly inconspicuous.

At least it’s dark, he guesses?

Fuck’s sake.

🖤

Updates are quicker here, if you want to speed run to more of the monsterfucking that

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @scoops-aboy86 @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups 

Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, still close enough that his chest presses against Steve’s for it, and it…it makes it feel less-bad. The news.

The everything.

“Fuck,” he breathes out slow, eyes gone big now for a very different reason, but he’s just as gorgeous for it.

Steve’s lucky that—despite the fluttering in his chest not going away or ceasing to distract him in the best of ways at the worst of times—over the course of all these months? He’s gotten way better at taking those doe eyes in and moving forward; of sinking into the depth of them and treading, keeping his head up and in the game, rather than giving into the blissful call of drowning.

He still does that, of course, just. More intentionally.

“Do you think we can draw them away in literally any other direction?” Steve asks, because it’s honestly the best plan he’s got. He refuses to give up this space, this little nook of a…almost a fucking home they have, where Steve dives into the lake and lands soaked where Eddie waits for him, arms open. He will not let anyone find Eddie before Eddie’s ready. Before everything is absolutely safe.

Because Steve may not have actually stuck around full-time for the fallout of losing this man before he decided to make arguably the stupidest and also the absolute best decision he’s ever made in his life—but he saw enough, and hell, even he felt enough then. Losing Eddie was ravaging. Decimating. Ruinous.

Steve doesn’t even know the words for what losing him, losing this would be now, after everything.

“Oh, do I think,” Eddie’s eyes light up, the weight that had blanketed over him at Steve’s news slowly but surely evaporating into the ash-thick air as he grins kinda devilishly, and snakes a hand around Steve’s waist, pulling him in dramatically to peck at his lips with force, with feeling as he declares unequivocally:

“The US government is nothing compared to the two of us, baby.”

Steve recognizes it as a given—high praise but also a statement of fact that they’ve proven more than enough times already—rather than clearing a bar set below the fucking ground. As Steve’s told Eddie before: just because there are more of them in Hawkins these days than there are regular residents, doesn’t mean they’re a competent hoard. Just that they require more thinking to dodge, for the sheer number of them.

Still. Hearing it out loud, with such certainty, does help.

“How’s,” Steve asks, reaching while Eddie’s arms are still holding on to bury his fingers in those curls, massage around the roots—the silent way he always asks it, now.

How’s what’s underneath here doing?

“Steady,” Eddie reaches to tap his temple indicatively before catching one of Steve’s hands in his own. “Promising,” he squeezes their palms: not a reassurance so much as a confirmation—they’re a team, and they’re in this thing together; “I think.”

“No more anger?” Because that was the strongest thing, the emotion Eddie felt the hardest through every inch of him, and from the very start, he’d said that was the first thing he’d felt that wasn’t his own—and has been the last bit to hang on so tight.

“Last thing I got was more,” Eddie bites his lower lip a little; “almost positive?” He says it like he doubts it, but can’t think of any other way to make sense of it. “But a little desperate, too. Way weaker, though.”

He smiles a little at Steve, like he wants to underscore how good that all sounds, that all is; almost like he wants Steve to be proud of the milestone, the step-by-step improvements.

As if Steve isn’t proud of every single cell of Eddie Munson; as if he has been beyond fucking proud that Eddie decided it was worth it; that he was worth it, to fight off what he could have far more easily just surrendered to.

And that he let Steve help him, trusted Steve even if Eddie did the heavy lifting: it’s been a heady fucking thing to live out, like this. Steve knew he liked being helpful but this…this was an entirely different playbook, whole different universe of significance in it: the gesture and the outcomes, alike.

“Your kiddos good?” Eddie asks, light but careful. Finds Steve’s hand and squeezes again.

“Far as I know,” because he might not. Know. Or else: he’d more likely than anything know too late—when everyone had to know—plus he doesn’t think he gets to call them his kiddos anymore, or else, shouldn’t assume he can.

He’ll deal with that later. They’re alive, for now, and that’s what Steve can help maintain as fact. That’s really all he has the wherewithal for, after everything that he’s put first in his life, his world.

His heart.

“But, maybe not for long?” he asks, because regardless of the relationships he may or may not still have with the little shitheads: he does love them, and he does care what happens to them, and he would put his life on the line for them, so he needs to…take note of what Eddie’s really asking. Because they both know what he’s asking.

Baby Byler.

Because Eddie had seen what Vecna had done to the kid at the start of everything. And if…if that’s what the almost-positive-definitely-desperate feeling was about?

Then they probably are, very quickly, running out of time.

But like hell will Steve let that mean anything short of safety, for Eddie. Anything short of freedom, and a long fucking life, and the ability to lie in bed together, wake up in the morning, kiss each other to sleep at night—

Steve nods, hears everything they don’t say—not because they don’t want to, or can’t, but because they no longer have to. Waste of precious time, when you know someone from their bones, their vessels, inside and out.

Because he’ll forget if he doesn’t hand it over now, and because he wants to keep Eddie’s arms around him but the fucking case is digging into him fucking hard, he covers Eddie’s hand on his hip and keeps it there while he reaches underneath his hold to slip the tape he’d brought for Eddie’s walkman—which Steve’s surprised has lasted as well as it has down here, it kinda feels like everything fucking dies here but Steve brought thatdown in the early days, trying to play off of what worked before and actually making progress with it, though now it’s just a sliver of reality, of what’s waiting when it’s all over to give Eddie as much relief as Steve can offer until that time finally comes—and the batteries. The little waterproof camping case thingy he found in the wreckage of one of the sporting goods stores the gates had torn apart does a pretty solid job for keeping Eddie’s music juiced up, but it’s the weirdest fucking shape.

Either way, he glances at it—no water inside, good sign—and holds both up for Eddie’s perusal.

“Literal angel,” he says reverently, half against Steve’s lips for it as he leans in and kisses Steve breathless again, because, like, he knows exactly how to. It’d almost be impossible for Eddie’s mouth to be on his and it not be absolutely, mind-numbingly breathtaking.

“It’s hard to get any new releases from outside,” he nods to the cassette of something that may or may not even be new music, but was Ozzy Osbourne and he wasn’t going to not get it for Eddie. “That’s been out for a while,” he tacks on like a half-apology—he’s lucky he got it at all, in fairness, but when his parents learned they couldn’t buy their way back into Hawkins, and enough people knew they had a son and he was there? They decided to try to make it look nice by trying to buy Steve whatever things could be sent across the quarantine zone.

It’s clear they still don’t give a fuck because he’s asked for some very weird nerd shit for Eddie, and he gets just about all of it. Just…a few months behind schedule.

“Literal,” Eddie kisses his hedging away from with that bruising force again, now; “angel,” and when he swipes the tape and the batteries from Steve’s hands he sticks them immediately in his back pocket—kinda rude, actually; Steve would have liked to squeeze that a little—but then he wraps Steve up closer, full-bodied from shoulders to knees, and Steve melts a little, like always: the unspoken, unspeakable weight sliding off him when Eddie touches him, holds him, makes it feel like he’ll keep Steve always. And when Steve started to believe that touch, it was magic. It was world-altering.

It was love.

So: because it’s love, right now? Steve melts and feels raw, naked, and perfect. In a way he only even knows exists because of Eddie, but now that he does know: he surrenders to it gladly, wholly, for as long as he possibly can.

“I still cannot grasp the idea of fucking Hawkins in lockdown,” Eddie breathes close to Steve’s ear, teasing the tiniest shiver from him without even trying. “Of course when something exciting happens, I’m out of commission,” he deadpans, but Steve still laughs. Eddie’s dark humor has definitely gotten him through the last year-plus—Eddie has gotten him through, but like, the specifics make up all of Eddie, and that’s an important part to highlight—and it’s more than rubbed off on Steve a little. He’s gotten enough weird side-eyes from the Party when he does spend any time around them and doesn’t just keep quiet.

Mostly he does keep quiet, at least regarding anything he actually cares about, because doing anything more might give Eddie away, and he won’t risk that, Steve will fucking die before he risks that; so he largely just throws himself blindly and maybe a little angrily, a little too-brute-force at things that don’t matter, at all, but make for an excellent cover. And keep any questions mostly at bay because Steve’s not exactly ‘good company’ anymore, the way he jumps at any hint of bait and makes an issue of it—so long as he doesn’t start it, he can’t risk starting something that could lead back to Eddie, no matter how careful he is; best to let other people thread the needle so that Steve can unravel enough of a smokescreen to misdirect any possible attention in the wrong places, so long as it doesn’t blind anyone to something that could really hurt them.

Like, life-or-death hurt them. Steve…Steve’s learned really fucking clearly of late that he can’t really worry about anything more than that. There’s only so much of him, where he used to think he could run forever on nothing but the belief that he was helping someone, keeping someone safe; but there’s only so much of him, and using any part of that limited resource not on Eddie is…well.

It’s got to be rationed, and kept to a bare minimum. Everyone’s priorities shifted after the last full-on assault on the Upside Down, after everythingchanged—if anyone expected Steve to be different, whether they can know the whys or not, well.

That shit’s on them.

“Oh hey,” Eddie’s voice shakes Steve a little, and Steve tilts his head back, unwilling to disentangle the hold they have on each other but wanting to see his face, wanting to see him for whatever he has to say; for everything he ever has to say:

“Happy eleven months.”

Eddie’s smiling at him so warm, with such a depth of admiration Steve could fucking choke on it and would do so gladly, but instead it just washes over him as he blinks, because…

“Since what?” Because Steve Harrington keeps track of his fucking anniversaries. Keeps track of just about everything when it comes to Eddie, and there’s no fucking way he missed—

“Since you said you didn’t want to fuck me,” Eddie’s voice goes a little dreamy, peppered with a sigh Steve knows isn’t even put-on or exaggerated, is literally where his whole fucking soul’s at: “you wanted to make love to me.”

And Steve…even now, Steve didn’t know Eddie would have remembered that. It was fairly early, they moved fucking fast, and Steve falls like a lead goddamn weight on a normal day but Eddie was, is, something wholly and entirely new.

Eddie’s his forever, he knows that. No matter what happens, Steve knows his heart’s spoken for. End of.

But he didn’t know Eddie had enough of himself, then, at least not in the moment. He probably should have known shortly after, and put it together, so he would have—

There’s a nip at the swell of his bottom lip: Eddie’s preferred method of coaxing Steve out of his head. It’s surprisingly effective.

“Sorry,” Steve says after he shakes himself a little, meets Eddie’s smile with a little apology either way. “I was counting by the day we both actually said it,” when Eddie said he loved Steve, which was wild; no one’s ever just said it to Steve like that, certainly not first; “like, directly.”

Eddie just smiles at him softer, steeped all the more in that same fucking love:

“Don’t be sorry,” Eddie huffs a little, pecking quick at both corners of Steve’s lips before moving to pepper little kisses at random around his face until he gets a laugh, and then full on giggles that don’t belong in this place, never do, and feel all the more profoundly significant because of it.

“Just,” Eddie pauses with his lips between Steve’s eyebrows: “you got enough time to make love to me before you have to climb away from me?”

Steve cannot help himself but to snort at the way Eddie pretends to try to be innocent about it. He fails spectacularly even when he tries. Steve intercepts his next kiss with a finger to his lips, which he knows before it happens that Eddie will suck into his mouth shamelessly.

It kinda turns Steve on. Like, a lot.

“Wouldn’t have let you kiss me like that when I got here if I didn’t,” Steve says, letting a hand slip down to Eddie belt, which: it’s not exactly true but Steve would like to think if he really didn’t have the time he’d cut the rope, per se, before they started climbing.

They don’t have time, but Steve…Steve will make fucking time, goddamnit.

Eddie just smirks at him, either way.

“Yeah, you would have,” he says around Steve’s finger in his mouth, knowingly and wantonly and yeah.

Yeah, fuck. He would have, he did, he will.

Always, he will.

🖤

✨want what comes next (though it's really what came before to lead to here)? >>>✨

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @scoops-aboy86 @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups 

Because sure—he and Robin had landed at Steve’s house before he got off home from his shift, but they both have keys and Steve was stopping on his way back for snacks and shit to hold them over through to dinner, and fuck if it’s not so goddamn domestic as to flutter under Eddie’s breastbone and ache root-deep in his teeth—but now he’s poking around the pool for…pool-care reasons, presumably. So he not doing nothing, technically, he’s walking, and leaning, and crouching to read a thing on the…filter? Skimmer? Thingy that makes noise.

Irrelevant.

“Greek,” Eddie over-enunciates; “god.”

He half-tries to hide the licking of his lips as part of the extra oomph he’s giving his words but like, one: he doesn’t try hard or anything. He’d give both his kneecaps to stick his tongue all over Steve Harrington.

But also two: he fails miserably anyway, given how Robin rolls her eyes and scoffs like someone insulted Italian cinema at her.

“Also he’s adding to them actively,” Robin pouts her lips like she sucked on a lemon; “the pit stains.” Then she tilts her head, considering:

“At least he washes the thing, he is pretty well house-trained,” she glances Eddie’s direction again: “I guess that’s a point in his favor.”

It doesn’t sound like a point in anyone’s favor; it sounds like she’s trying to make Eddie less than impossibly turned on, here.

Trying, and failing oh-so-miserably.

“You understand that him adding to the sweat is an active point in his favor,” Eddie feels the pressing need to clarify; “multiple points, as a matter of fact.”

And Robin—again, heathen—does this full-body shudder thing as Eddie very pointedly focuses back on what matters: staring at Steve’s…everything.

“It’s disgusting,” he hears her comment, but he doesn’t like…hear her. White noise, mostly. “Like I literally think I just threw up in my mouth.”

And it is mostly white noise, but Eddie can’t…he can’t let anyone just imply such distaste about Steve like that, can he?

Absolutely not.

“Do you find Vickie’s boob sweat’s equally off-putting?” Eddie asks rolling his neck to side-eye her with razor-sharp intent. “Feel like she’d have some strong feelings about that.”

And it’s hard to notice in the sun like this, hard to be sure—but that just makes the fact that Eddie is so sure of Robin’s blush all the sweeter.

Fucking vindication.

“That is different,” she tries to pull off a haughty kind of huff but in reality she’s a little to flustered to land it. “Man-sweat is so different.”

“Exactly,” Eddie sighs, not not dreamily; “it’s fucking delicious.”

She makes a heaving noise next to him but honestly, the sun’s shifted and the sparkling happening just across the pool has turned fucking blinding.

Which means Eddie honestly has zero time for anything but the absolute vision bending over the water to do…pool maintenance things. Presumably.

And look delicious while doing it. Undeniably.

“And him, holy fucking hell, his sweat has to taste of nectar and ambrosia,” which, Eddie is of the opinion that all of Steve has to taste like that or better, has to be better than the delicacies of gods themselves in an old world of hedonism and pleasure; Steve would outshine them all—

“He has to be a ten course meal, Michelin-starred and then some,” Eddie swallows hard around the way he goddamn salivates, there’s no escaping it. “I have no doubt in my mind.”

“Your taste is incomprehensible,” Robin declares like he’s a lost cause. And maybe he is.

To the unparalleled beauty and divine splendor of Steve goddamn Harrington.

“He’s your platonic soulmate. You’d think you’d be more in his corner, here,” Eddie shoots back, more distracted than is probably helpful for making his point but like: how the fuck is he supposed to be anything but distracted right now?

Answer: there is no ‘how’ for that. Absolutely impossible.

“In all things save his physical appearance,” Robin says with a kind of stalwart defiance that Eddie does genuinely love about her, and her general defense of Steve; no matter what else they disagree on, they’ll always ultimately be on the same team where he’s involved.

“One could say he is,” she glances over her glasses at Steve, who seems to be drying his hands off, and god, but what glorious hands; “objectively attractive to conventional tastes.”

Eddie shoots her a look, indignant as fuck:

“To all tastes.”

“That favor men.”

And Eddie…can concede that.

“Touché.”

He still thinks she should have better appreciation for aesthetic perfection wherever it presents itself. Especially for how high and mighty she can get about some really fucking weird abstract art or whatever.

Plus she absolutely needs to give her soulmate more credit. By a factor of at least…a million.

“What are you two getting up to over here?”

Eddie startles—of course he takes his eyes off of this vision for three seconds to defend said visions’s splendor to the uncultured and he’s caught off-guard for it—while Robin just raises an eyebrow Steve’s direction. Eddie suspects it means something in their weird brain-sharing language, but Eddie isn’t without his own tactics.

“Whatever does his lordship mean?” Eddie turns wide eyes he knows Steve’s a little weak for on the man himself, even if those eyes usually earn him a scoff and an eye roll, which are honestly the most glorious of glorious reactions to his theatrics.

When they’re Steve’s reactions.

“You look,” Steve hums, eyes them both consideringly for a second: “plotty.”

“Plotty?” Robin snorts at him.

“As in, plotting something,” Steve enunciates in that bitchy overtone he gets that makes Eddie a little extra…hot at the hems.

“Probably to do with me, and not in a good way.”

Steve quirks a single brow and frowns at them in the way that screams all of the hands he wants to put on his hips but is resisting, like, Eddie can see his fingers clenching for how much he is resisting the mom pose right now, it’s endearing as fuck even when he lifts one of those fingers and points between them both accusingly as he declares:

“Suspicious.”

“Moi?” Eddie lifts a hand to his chest, scandalized. “Never.”

“Both of you. Absolutely,” Steve smirks at him, but it’s a warm thing. It’s a warm thing in itself as a rule but also for how it lights up Eddie’s whole fucking body to be the subject it’s trained on:

“But especially you.”

And Eddie…there’s something in how Steve’s eyes kinda fuckin’ twinkle, like magic, okay, and that unmistakable-mystical-damn-near-celestial something makes Eddie’s heart kinda trip over itself, flushed-bright and dancing and too-transfixed to know a beat but inescapably compelled nonetheless: unceasingly.

Eddie—not even in his deepest darkest most sordid musings, but actually increasingly in his all-the-time musings, and unashamedly so—but Eddie imagines comments like that with different context, deeper weight.

But then also he just replays them entirely as they are, no filter or changing or rearranging to suit Eddie’s maudlin heartsore fantasies: they work just as nicely that way, no problem.

They still tingle across his nerves, go warm and effervescent in his blood—make him fucking swoon, all dizzy with wanting and wildly unabashed about it, down to the goddamn cells of him.

Robin, on the other hand, shakes her head and moves to stand as Steve snaps his fingers and points at her.

“Clearly not denying being plotty!”

She snorts as she folds her sunglasses and sets them on her chair.

“Pretty sure that’s not a word, so I couldn’t be it if I tried,” she counters, far too prim about it, especially when she folds in less than half a second and whines a little:

“I want pizza.”

Steve rolls his eyes—he did fucking stop to get snacks specifically on his way home from work—but doesn’t even bother putting up a real front tofold in the first place:

“Go pick a menu.”

She kisses the air near his cheek like a complete fucking dork and bounces into the house with a backward sort of salute. Eddie sighs, stands to follow, but then—

“Eddie,” Steve puts a hand on his bicep before he can move any further, and places them oh-so-close to one another as a result:

“Hang back a second, yeah?”

And, listen, Eddie pays attention when Steve speaks. Not just because he’s kinda obsessed with the man a little bit, actually in all honesty way more because Steve is kind of the best friend he’s maybe ever had. By, like, miles. Boatloads. Whatever. All that and more.

So Eddie pays attention.

Which is how he knows Steve’s tone, the pitch of the words—low and too tight and a little breathy and not in the way that makes Eddie feel like he’s going to vibrate apart with wanting but the way that makes him feel like his stomach’s lost its bottom and he’s unraveling because something is wrong, and when Steve, Steve, sounds like something’s wrong, when his steadfast and sure kind of heroic resolve gets pinched around his eyes and the corners of his mouth like he looks right now?

That’s…that’s not okay.

“Look,” Steve breathes slow, a hiss through half-clenched teeth; “I,” and he stumbles a little, trails off, and his hand on Eddie’s arm feels…feels like a tether, but Eddie’s not sure for who.

It feels like a warning. Foreshadowing that surges like tar through Eddie’s veins, sticks in the pumping of his blood.

It’s hateful.

“Steve,” and Eddie has this horrible, like, premonition sort of feeling, that whatever is going to come next is going to break him wide open, and he wants to be wrong, he needs with everything in him to be entirely fucking wrong, but he…

He knows Steve.

“Let me get this out,” Steve’s grip on him tightens, and Eddie tries to pitch that in a positive light: he’s still touching you, whatever’s gone wrong is enough to make him uncomfortable in his own skin, but it isn’t enough to make him want to stop being near you—

Eddie’s pulse trips hard at the introduction of the thought at all, though: a world where Steve isn’t near him anymore is…

Eddie can fucking taste his own thrashing blood for how his heart gets all lodged-up, sour in his throat at the mere suggestion.

“It’s been,” Steve takes a shuddery sort of breath, eyes darting away, looking anywhere but at Eddie as he worries at his bottom lip.

“It’s been kind of the best, like,” and Steve looks at Eddie, then, but where it should be reassuring, a goddamn gift, to bask in the definitional fucking light of his man?

Steve’s gaze is panicked, beneath the surface. Like a cornered animal.

Eddie’s chest is too tight. He can’t fucking swallow.

“Being friends, y’know, and,” and Steve swallows hard enough that even Eddie’s preoccupation with that gorgeous throat can’t outweigh how it makes Eddie heart thrash so goddamn hard in the most nauseating way, sick inside to the very core and spreading—

“And having you over all the time, I,” and Steve falters a little, looks so lost when his eyes meet Eddie’s, and Eddie wants to reach, wants to comfort but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed, because the dice are lining up, here, and he’s increasingly aware with every passing second that’s maybe building up to the most cataclysmic fall he could possibly imagine, a loss even he can’t envision some way to pull back from, because the last time he crashed that hard he had Steve goddamn Harrington to carry him from the wreckage, and this time…

This time—

“I love that,” Steve says, and again: Eddie can’t even soak that up for what it is, or torment himself deliciously for what he wishes it was in the wildest of his most treasured fantasies—no, he doesn’t get any of that.

Because Steve sounds fucking choked around it. Almost…almost scared.

And Eddie?

Eddie won’t be able to fucking live with himself if he’s the reason this man is scared.

“Me too,” Eddie half-rasps, blood loud as hell in his ears, a death knoll as much as a screech in absolute anguish.

Eddie never pretended to be anything less than dramatic but…this warrants it.

All of it, and more besides.

“But it’s like,” Steve heaves a breath that stretches his shirt tight across his pecs, another glory that Eddie can’t even bring himself to mentally roll around in: “I’m, I can’t, you…”

Maybe he should have been more…abashed. About…all of it. He knew he was being obvious, but he thought he showed his most unashamed and unfiltered wanting when Steve wasn’t looking, and when was looking, Eddie was sure, he’d been so sure that he was hitting the perfect note of quirky-freak-you’re-also-friends-with in every single one of the ways he flirted with Steve to his face, never pushing too hard beyond plausible deniability, fuck, fuck, what if he’s the reason Steve looks so tense and uncomfortable and anxious and, and—

“You’re driving me fucking crazy, man.”

Oh. Oh.

He is the reason.

There it is. There’s the incontrovertible evidence. He’s the problem. He brought this on himself.

Eddie doesn’t think a heart is supposed to actually be able, physically, to twist and kinda cave in on itself that way his does just then.

And Eddie…Eddie isn’t sure how Steve’s hand is still on his arm, but he’s frozen, he doesn’t think he can move lest he unravel at Steve feet, and when Steve looks at him—he has to look like a deer in headlights, but one that knows its fate and wouldn’t even bother trying to escape it, because what would be the fucking point?—but when Steve looks at him, and groans?

“You’ve got,” and Eddie can only imagine what he’s got: to leave, to get the fuck out of here and never come back, to stop sullying the sights of someone like Steve with his, his disgusting—

And then Steve’s hand is finally leaving Eddie’s arm, and fuck, fuck, but Eddie can’t even pretend he doesn’t whimper for the loss—

But then: there’s the hand back, on his skin.

Both hands, actually. Steve’s gorgeous, broad fucking hands: not just on his skin.

In his hair.

And Steve’s looking at him with…there’s something burning, something intent in those eyes, like golden flame out of the wide stretch of pupil, lucious and staring, swimming kind of languid, a little fever-bright and Eddie…doesn’t know what to do with it, Steve’s hands in the sticky pile of his sweat-soaked hair—he’d forgotten anything to pull it back with, a tie or a sweat band or something, so he’s the sun-bleached version of a drowned fucking rat, he’d definitely been planning to jump into the pool after Steve’d finished whatever special caretaking of the water he’d been up to before, but now that’s probably not in the cards because Eddie is driving Steve crazy, and Steve can’t—

He doesn’t expect the way Steve gathers the stringy mess of his curls, almost…almost tenderly and: oh.

Oh, Eddie’s seen the hair elastic on Steve’s wrist every so often, didn’t think much of it aside from him probably just being the mother-hen they all love for the girls, or hell, even Mike given the state of that kid’s current style—

But Steve’s wrapping that tie around Eddie’s hair like it’s a natural impulse, an action taken by rote. Like taking care of Eddie was a given which: of course it was, Steve took care of everyone.

But this feels different.

And Eddie can’t breathe, still, but now his heart’s…it’s confused, he thinks, because he’s still in the clutches of the sick-twisting feeling, the fear of losing, but even his immediate tendency to leap into bracing for the worst can’t wholly throw out the way Steve’s touch is just…lingering. The way his gaze on Eddie is, is—

Unabashed.

And if that gaze was unabashed? Eddie nearly chokes—it’s hard to catch a breath you’re not successfully drawing in the first place without kinda tripping of it, y’know?—but Eddie nearly fucking chokes when Steve shapes Eddie’s hair into a sloppy ponytail at the base of his neck and then…starts stroking, almost petting under the nape, where Eddie’s skin was already hot and sweat-tacky before Steve’s attentions kicked that whole shebang into overdrive, plus Eddie has absolutely no chill, literal or figurative now, and then, then—

Holy fuck, but when Steve does bring his hands away from Eddie’s hair, he reaches to brush his own hair back, but like, on the way—and he tries to be at least kinda-subtle, but more suave, because Steve has some degree of chill—but on the way he makes it look like he’s flicking a stray strand from his upper lip: and it’s only a fucking second but, there are two extremely significant things of note that gild that simple motion to the point where it’s fucking blinding.

One: there is no hair in Steve’s face. None. Eddie knows how Steve’s hair falls in every possible fucking permutation, and he fucking pays attention. There’s no hair.

And two: it’s a split-second, but Steve’s gorgeous pink tongue peeks out for the most-profound-split-second, and licks the closest finger, like an unconscious need; a given.

So, maybe it’s by-proxy, with a couple steps in the middle, but like: Steve is fucking licking Eddie’s sweat like that, and the shine of the whole affair might be blinding?

But Eddie’s not blind.

He fucking sees Steve’s already pretty huge pupils blow the fuck out as soon as his hand goes from his mouth to his hair.

And Steve does nothing to hide it.

In fact—and Eddie can’t tell if it’s deliberate or just, like, gravity and inevitably, which: how, how can things have shifted so many times and so much in the course of just minutes, seconds, holy fucking hell—but Steve leans in, face dangerously close to where Eddie can feel his heartbeat absolutely having to be jumping at the line of his throat, and the way Steve inhales brushes his chest against Eddie’s arm, the sparkler sensation for every ghost of a touch lighting a conflagration that might be the end of him, but might just on the flip side of it all be the making of everything he was ever supposed to be.

The revelation of a life, a future he never expected to find, let alone to maybe…maybe have if he’s reading this right. And it’s mostly implications and blind fucking hope that he’s lining up the clues here in the right sequence, pointing them all toward the right conclusion instead of just the one Eddie wants with every fiber of his being, every unbridled convulsion of his punch-drunk heart because if those two things are one and the same that’s absurd, that is absurd because Eddie doesn’t get the happy ending, not all the way, just half-the-way at best if he’s lucky, and he’s been far too lucky lately to bank on that, so he’s, he’s—

But Eddie knows Steve. He sees…all of it. The persistent and reoccurring hint in ever single fucking breath the man takes that maybe…maybe Eddie’s somehow more than halfway lucky, this time.

And then Steve’s glancing up from under his lashes, sidelong where he’s still very actively breathing in—as if the rank musk Eddie must be emanating is something worth seeking out, worth savoring, good god—to lock their eyes and Eddie feels less pinned and more drawn, ensconced as Steve’s eyes wonder a little, glimmer a lot, and ask a question. Permission.

Eddie’s breath’s back enough now to catch like it’s meant to, because…permission. Like…wondering somehow if Eddie wants this. If he’s ready.

Whatever Steve reads of Eddie’s internal rush of absolutely incredulity must be sufficient, must give the go-ahead well enough, because the pad of Steve’s thumb is finding Eddie’s cheek bone, tracing his jaw, delicate and reverent and Eddie might pass out, might drop to his knees for a whole variety of reasons, all for the awe of this man.

And then Steve’s thumb wanders to the galloping thrust of Eddie’s heartbeat at the side of his neck, and Steve’s jaw drops a little as he lets his touch settle, press a bit against the torrent, almost transfixed. Then he’s tipping his head, considering-like, more of that permission but less seeking it and more opening a window for Eddie to protest, or pull away, and Eddie might be blindsided to fuck right now but Jesus H., as if he’d even think of pulling back.

Steve sees that resolve clear as day—almost as if he watches Eddie, pays attention just the same as Eddie does in kind.

Before Eddie can wholly steep in the implications of that, as like, a thing that’s maybe true, Steve is leaning closer, breathing wet against the raucous swell, then drawing circles in the sweat and vapor before he pops his thumb into his mouth and sucks, salacious as sin and Eddie might be dying, might already be dead, maybe this is an afterlife better than he could ever picture, and he, he…

Fuck, just, whatever he is, Eddie is made of helium and glitter on the inside, floating and weightless and free while every breath and heartbeat dances in the light of the man before him with Eddie’s sweat and his own breath caught commingled on his thumbprint, tongue swirling to savor every drop and Steve’s shooting his shot—because that’s what this is, right, this is Steve saying what Eddie’s been too chickenshit to do anything but gossip loud and whine incessantly to Robin about while he can only pretend to couch his overflowing affections for this fucking pinnacle of a man in banter and pet names and the illusion of what the Freak can get away with—but if Steve is willing to risk what he said, what he clearly saidhe loved about what they already have, because Steve is brave and strong and beautiful and, and, everything?

Fuck if Eddie’s going to leave him hanging now. He might still be a runner, but there’s only so far he’s willing to push being a whole-ass fool.

“I want to suck at your skin like a tootsie pop.”

Steve blinks, lips parting around the thumb he still hasn’t wholly extracted from his mouth. He looks struck by lightning, but if lightning were made of ecstasy and arousal and maybe, if Eddie’s lucky one more time: desire.

Like…like a more-than-lust kind of desire. Almost like…like elation.

It’s possible Eddie’s just projecting what he’s experiencing onto Steve without any restraint, now; but Eddie, who doesn’t make a habit of hoping for a whole lot in life, actually thinks he might…he might be seeing something true.

So he leaps a little further, a little higher. Commits to being a fool because he knows what’s in his chest, and has been there for eons: not just lust.

Not even close.

“I am convinced these,” Eddie reaches, more confident than he feels but the pull there is magnetic, a thing he has to fight against everything moment so that giving in feels like relief, or maybe coming home.

“These are a fucking connect-the-dots puzzle drawn specifically for my tongue,” he drags a delicate touch from freckle to freckle, from the hinge of Steve’s jaw down toward the side of his neck.

“Like they call to me, Stevie, to just,” and Eddie growls a little, groans because fucking hell he’s doing this, he’s saying this to the man the words belong to, his heart might explode any second like a piñata stuffed with iridescent confetti, it’s so much, it’s so much—

“Your neck is so,” Eddie muscles the words out as his eyes refuse to stray from the twin beauty marks that sure as shit move with Steve’s swallows, with the force of his blood now, too:

“It’s so biteable,” Eddie half-whines the confession, worries for half-a-second that this might be the thing that’s one step to far, that cements the insumountable difference between heart-of-gold and gold-medal-freak, because friends are one thing but they’re…whatever this is building to is other, is new and what if Steve doesn’t want—

But Steve, glorious Steve carved of perfection and light itself, with his precious heart cast of things weightier and worthier than gold: Steve just tips his chin, then his whole head, slow and deliberate and unmistakable:

A fucking invitation.

Jesus.

And Eddie grazes his teeth against that skin like an appetizer course, his amuse-bouche because Steve is a finer gift than any culinary delight, a feast that puts all other tastes and tantalizations to shame, to say nothing of the sounds he makes, that thread straight between Eddie’s ribs as much as they shoot straight to his groin, thick and heady and holy fuck, but he needs, so he grazes his teeth, nibbles at the stretch of caramel-kissed flesh between both marks and then he purses his lips, sucks the whole space inside and he—

“Dinguses.”

They don’t spring apart, but they do pause. They don’t look up, save to meet each other’s gaze and come to an unspoken understanding that they can listen without looking away, without breaking the spell of their heartbeats both visible, palpable at the notches of their throats like a vow in flesh and blood; heart and soul and then some.

Maybe Eddie’s getting ahead of himself. But he…there’s something in this that’s making him believe.

“I meant it when I said I wanted pizza,” Robin drawls form the patio door, doesn’t even seem to care all that much that no one’s acknowledging her outright; “should be here in half an hour.”

“Plenty of time,” Eddie shrugs, lips quirking with the buddings of a Cheshire sort of grin. Because he wants more of that neck, he wants more of everything Steve has, and is, and will ever be until the day the sun goes out and there’s nothing—but if he dives into kissing Steve like he wants to?

No one’s going to pay for the pizza—regrettable but not sufficient alone to dissuade him. But also the neighbors will hear what they can’t see and Eddie knows himself well enough—thrills at the real promise of soon knowing Steve well enough in this new-breathtaking way, mapping this man damn-near-perfectly in one more thing—but Eddie knows the sounds he makes will be…damning beyond denial.

He also knows there’s not a bone in his body that will stand for denying any of this. The exact opposite in fact, only and always and forever.

And it doesn’t hurt, or make Eddie yearn pathetically—or else: not more pathetic than his default in wanting and aching and loving Steve Harrington; instead, it’s a promise on the horizon. It’s golden and thrilling and true, and more than enough to deserve the proper care, the most radiant time and place.

But for continuing to lick and nip and taste, for right now?

They do have time.

He draws back just enough to gauge Steve’s agreement; to be floored and have his heartbeat overtaken by butterflies and other winged creatures who say damn the laws of physics and sense and take to the skies on the pure impulse of whimsy and moxy and verve.

Eddie thinks they must have a little taste, a tiny baby fraction of a similar feeling in them, for flying, to the one Eddie is being drenched inside, drowned delightedly in when Steve smirks at him, eyes dancing before he leans closer, rumbles at the shell of Eddie’s ear before he ducks to mouth, kitten-lick a bit behind:

“Plenty for now.”

And Eddie laughs, fuck, but how he laughs with the wonder and the utter unbridled joy of all your dreams coming true, and the future turning suddenly and unprecedentedly not just bright, but exquisite beyond all reason, and he leans to put his mouth on those twin dots to connect, to take into himself and make a part of his genetic code, to rewrite and reshape the parts of him left—if there are any, if any are even left—but to encode them in the Braille of Steve’s body: home, and love, and right.

He’s mostly busy with that project, the quest of a lifetime, so much that he barely hears the overblown irritation in the voice that comes from behind them:

“You morons are lucky that tree-line’s so thick.”

And yeah, they are.

But Eddie can feel the lift of Steve’s lips form where he’s sucking bruises to Steve’s neck, and really: that’s the thing he’s luckiest of all for.

No contest.

☀️☀️☀️

✨also on ao3

for @hbyrde36 on her birthday 🎉

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups @tinyplanet95

The source of the sound, though, once Steve rounds the last corner toward it, isn’t a rando at all. Not even close.

“Ice first, babe,” Steve’s fucking fiancé says as he smiles that way he has that’s not megawatt for the cameras, but more like suns he’s harnessed from other galaxies just to make his joy at seeing Steve, of all people, bright enough to know without any words at all.

But yeah: Eddie’s making a figure-8 in the water like it doesn’t have its own circulation system, or like Eddie doesn’t trust it to operate sufficiently for his Stevie, and if Steve ever needs a reminder of how lucky, or how loved he is, this is the kind of shit that keeps it top of mind, every goddamn moment.

(So yeah: he never strictly needs a reminder, ever, but strike him dead if he fails to melt into it every time he’s reminded, anyway.)

“You remember what happened when you tried to sneak a hot shower in to rinse off last time,” Eddie quirks a brow at him as he reaches out for Steve, ushers him toward the bath and patiently guides him slow beneath the frigid waterline. Steve takes the minutes he needs to adjust—to the cold, he’s never gotten flat-out used to it enough to switch on a dime once he’s in, but then also to the almost categorically impossible presence of his fiancé, here, not just at his side tending his very-minor-not-concerning injuries but like…in this space, at all. Which is why the first words out of his mouth when his teeth aren’t in danger of cracking for the shivering anymore are:

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Because the match is away tonight, sure, and Eddie being there to see him play isn’t out of place, Eddie is weirdly and adorably proud of being his own brand of WAG, here, but it’s been less frequent of late because: Eddie?

Eddie’s in the same city tonight to play on their fucking world tour.

Which would have wrapped sound check by now and had at least the first openers on stage, what the fuck—

“You know I keep an eye on you until we go on, when I can’t be here,” Eddie says simply, and Steve tries to turn to where he hears Eddie’s voice come from—tries not to pout at the contradiction in his partner who should not be here at all, should be a few blocks down where Steve had fully intended to wait backstage for him after the game ended, but since he seems to in fact not be a figment of Steve’s imagination and is actually here, then why the fuck is he currently so far away—so Steve tries to turn toward the sound but…

Okay fine, yes. He regrets that attempt at asking movement from his obliques kinda fucking instantaneously.

But Eddie’s half-tutting, half-shushing gentle at the hiss Steve tries to stifle for the hurt as he rushes back, more towels in hand—small ones.

“In lieu of the shower I know you’re crawling out of your skin for.”

The moment Eddie reaches one toward his cheek Steve fucking moans: oh, his Eddie knows him so well. He can’t start with a shower to get clean and not pay some sort of price for it later.

So Eddie brought the heat to him; starts tenderly wiping down the skin left not wholly submerged, so careful of the already mottled bruising, and Steve’s eyes slip closed—fucking orgasmic like this.

Never gets any less earth shattering, to be loved like this.

But the point stands: the arena Corroded Coffin was playing tonight’s arguably in walking distance—Steve had been absolutely serious that he wasn’t even going to shower before unsuiting and bolting over to at least catch the encore, and that in itself speaks to his commitment, here; y’know, before he had to butt heads quite literally with fucking goddamn Hargrove—but they’d be on-stage at least, a couple songs in at most, and yet: here’s their lead guitarist.

Offering Steve a half-peeled perfectly ripe banana—like, Steve’s picky as fuck about what counts as a ripe banana and this one is perfect, he knows before he even bites in—with a blueberry Oikos in the other hand, tiny disposable spoon balanced on top and—

Oh, god.

Crook of the elbow? Eddie’s holding his own personal mid-show glass bottle of Yoo-hoo. Chocolate milk had sneaked into Steve’s recovery snack pack, but…the glass bottle of Yoo-hoo.

That’s Eddie’s, for after the sixth song of the set like clockwork—and Steve only drinks the goddamn chocolate milk because it makes him think of the love of his life in the first place, but while maybe Steve’s chest gets a little fluttery at the gesture and its layers of hard-earned, long-built knowing of people you care for that deep, it’s more a gesture-within-the-much-bigger-gesture, that one being Eddie’s presence here and not actively working toward his own Yoo-boo break—

“Plus Rob messaged me,” Eddie says out of the quiet and fuck; not that he blames Robin but fuck, mountains out of molehills here, of course that’d set Eddie running—

“So what am I doing here? No brainer babe,” Eddie rubs the cloth up Steve’s pec:

“Tending my beloved in his time of trial,” Eddie answers, smooth as anything as he continues to needlessly swirl the tub around Steve’s lower half until his already pale hand is bone-white for the cold, but then he’s just casually drying off his hand and standing, bending to press lips to Steve’s brow with the casual affection that keeps Steve weak in the knees still after all this time, and then Steve hears the flowing of water elsewhere, followed by some random shuffling around, before Eddie reappears at his side.

“Eddie,” Steve tries to sound reasonable around the unquenchable sheen of fucking-besotted he’s currently coated in—not least because what Eddie’s brought with him looks to be a basin of hot water given the steam rising from it, and a stack of face cloths—but he can’t let that distract him just now because:

“You have a show tonight.”

Which is why Eddie’s presence is an impossibility of scheduling at the very least—he may be playing in the same city Steve’s is for once on the same night, but it’s a decent half-hour walk from the arena they’re in now, which would have probably been quicker than trying to get through traffic this time of night with so many things going on; but this far into the match on top of it? Eddie should be waiting in the fucking wings by now, ready to take center stage for his show—

“That’s been regrettably cancelled.,” Eddie says but like…without any actual tone of the regret he claims. “Or maybe they went on without me. I’m lead guitar, I’m not the lead singer,” Eddie shrugs, wholly unbothered; “entirely replaceable, we’ve got Roddy in the wings specifically for this sort of reason, plus we’re in the city!” Eddie takes a second to gesture broad with both hands, stretching his arms wide. “So many local friends the boys could have called up to see if they could step in? Especially for just a night.”

And the…the simplicity in it. The nonchalance. The lack of care—or else, the only care in Eddie’s body being directed to Steve alone, and nothing else. Least of all, y’know. Eddie’s whole-ass career.

Steve wants to push, wants to protest and point that shit out, but Eddie’s lifting the banana back to his lips—which, he raises a brow at because…it’s such a terrible juxtaposition of contexts but the idea of being fed a banana, nearly naked…

Not that he can really hope to get hard for the frigid temps, but: doesn’t stop the stirring in his belly.

“You’re the fucking frontman if any of you are,” Steve volleys back on delay, mouth still half-full.

“Says you,” Eddie grabs for another, still-warm cloth and resumes his tending—Jeff’s lead vocals but hates the attention, so while Eddie stands by Jeff as frontman, no question, Steve goes with the actual person who’s always center in the photoshoots—his own biases aside.

“But we have plenty of people who can step in for the night,” Eddie shrugs it off; “and contacts in the area to call up, make a once-in-a-lifetime one-off event out of it,” and yeah, even Steve can think up at least ten guitarists based here just now, but still—

“I told the guys to make the call however they saw fit,” Eddie rubs against Steve’s nipple as he says it, and goddamnit: Steve would swear that’s intentional as distraction. Because Eddie…Eddie really doesn’t care if they went on without him or refunded the whole goddamn show.

He doesn’t fucking care. And he goes after what he does care about, and of course that still raps heady in Steve’s blood—how could it not?—but fucking hell—

“Eddie,” Steve tries not to sound ungrateful, because he’s anything but—Steve’s chest feels less bruised and more warm for the swell from the inside, for the sole reason of Eddie, being here—except:

“You can’t just—”

“Can,” Eddie leans, pecks one cheek; “did,” and Steve scoffs as if he can even pretend to be surprised by his fiancé anymore for these sorts of….shenanigans, let alone be convincing in acting like he disapproves in anything but theory—he’s only human, and what’s more: he’s so deeply in love it’d fucking kill him if he wasn’t convinced it was the very thing written in blood, keeping him alive.

Then Eddie pulls back, traces Steve’s lips with a callused fingertip before flicking his gaze up; before leaning in to say in a definitive kind of defiance, laced in undeniable devotion:

“Am,” and he captures Steve’s lips slow, thoroughly and deep and Steve…it’s enough for Steve to forget for a second that he’s banged up at all, the way that mouth, that tongue draw sensation like ascension to a higher fucking plane.

And then Eddie’s scooping up a spoonful of the yogurt and makes to try and lift it toward Steve and— Steve’s reflexes outstrip Eddie’s by a mile, even when injured, and he grabs it the spoon in his own hand, because he’ll be damned if he’s fed Greek fucking yogurt by his fiancé in possibly the least sexy of circumstances.

With possibly the least sexy of foods, at that. Doesn’t mean Steve won’t eat it, but. Now he can glare and pout around the spoon on his terms.

“People cancel because they lose their voice and shit all the time,” Eddie balances the container between them for Steve to spoon his own portions from; “this was way more important.”

Steve only narrowly avoids snorting the yogurt up his nose at that.

“How?”

Eddie—who may have shitty reflexes but sure as shit isn’t weak, and can in fact yank the spoon back when Steve’s not expecting the assault on it—but he takes the spoon away and puts it down somewhere out of Steve line of sight alongside the yogurt so that Eddie’s big wounded eyes can look their absolute scandalized best, good god.

“The love of my life, the heart in my chest, injured gravely?” Eddie’s holding the uncapped Yoo-hoo out for Steve to make good fucking use of, like the immense gift it is revered as in the view of this specific man deserves. He eyes Steve expectantly before Steve sighs and takes a long swig, much to Eddie’s approval—or at least enough approval for him to finish his answer:

“Self-explanatory, sweetheart,” Eddie shakes his head, incredulous that Steve would even ask. “Where you need me’s where I’m always gonna be.”

It’s a very good thing Steve’s injuries are largely on the lower half of his body, so there’s no confusing the heavy thump of his heart for those—because Eddie does that, causes that in Steve even now, and at this point Steve’s gonna put money on it never stopping—but he can’t accidentally attribute the heady-giddy trip of his pulse for some other-lesser muscle spasm.

“You’re absurd,” Steve says in the way he knows lands like other words, every time.

Other words closer to I love you bigger than breathing you absolutely insane motherfucker, given the way Eddie grins, flushing a little and popping both dimples for it.

Steve wraps his lips around the fucking Yoo-hoo bottle because if he doesn’t he’ll have nothing stopping him from kissing the hell out of that stupid gorgeous face, and while Steve doesn’t want to be stopped from that, like, ever?

He knows his abs will have another, very fucking loud opinion on the matter just now.

“You seriously canceled?” is what Steve seems to automatically funnel all his feeling into asking, the question a little wobbly, his eyes stinging just a touch.

“Second I heard, I was on my way.” Eddie leans against the rim of the tub, reaches in to swirl the water as if the thing was not actually pretty loudly circulating itself. “The guys expected it, didn’t even try to stop me,” Eddie tacks on, glancing at the clock on the wall behind Steve’s head, pursuing his lips before turning the bath off; “wanted me to send their love, too.”

Steve makes to try to stand but it’s like Eddie knows his plan before he gets to even struggle after it, soft but firm hands on his shoulders.

So Steve returns the pouting, with a much less…considering vibe.

“How did you—” Steve starts to ask but Eddie just tuts a little as he pecks Steve’s lips, shutting him up effectively, the beautiful bastard.

“When you’re playing, and I’m just waiting for our set time,” Eddie’s making the rounds of the space, collecting fuck knows what from cabinets and shelves, since the towels are literally next to Steve where he remains seated in the tub; “again, what do you think I watch?”

Steve rolls his eyes, because yeah, okay. But still—

“They’d have just said I got sidelined if you’d waited half-a-damn-second, it’s not even—”

“If I watch you get bodied to fuck, two-on-one by that fuckass Hargrove, and then crumble to the ice?” Eddie pauses, waits for Steve to meet his eyes as he asks almost indignantly:

“You think I’m waiting for those idiot fucking commentators?”

Okay. Okay fine.

Point.

“Robin said that they carried you off,” also: point. Steve hadn’t asked what Robin had shared specifically but the way Eddie’s voice drops to a whisper, breathy with leftover feeling that’s nothing less than real fear; goes solemn-like for it, Steve…he fucking concedes; “so I knew it had to be bad.”

Like there was anything to really concede. He’s in a fucking ice bath and he feels warm all over just knowing Eddie’s…Eddie’s here.

“It’s not that bad,” Steve says, and it’s not even an act, or posturing or some shit, not that he’d bother trying that around Eddie anymore, like he’d ever be able to fool him, and wouldn’t ever want to anyway; it’s just that Steve’s genuinely and frequently had so much worse that this—

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

And then Eddie’s there, arms outstretched with a towel over his shoulder, one of the oversized full-body ones flopping a little as he’s reaching and pulling Steve up mostly on his own steam, bracing Steve’s arms further back to both ease him up slow but also to bear more of Steve’s weight—which, again, Steve’s not an invalid but yes, also again, being treated like even a little discomfort is a cause for concern like this is…

It’s heady, is all. Always has been; another thing that looks like it always will be.

Steve feels pretty steady on his feet when he gets to them in the slowly warming water near his knees, but Eddie’s busy guiding him anyway to step out onto, yep, waiting towels, apparently he’s not going to trust the specially designed mat these tubs are installed on to safeguard Steve from slipping, Steve’s mother-henning really has rubbed off on his fiancé through the years.

And then Eddie’s flipping the towel over both arms so that he’s reaching toward Steve as a waiting, fluffed-up embrace and Steve…fuck.

Steve steps forward, or tries to: barely makes a single move before Eddie’s wrapping Steve up in his arms and the towel all at once and holding him so gentle, so attentive to where he guesses Steve’s ache are and Steve would have to know his fiancé less than better than the back of Steve’s own hand, than the beat of Steve’s own heart, to miss how Eddie still manages to be careful while he clutches Steve…just-this-side of desperate.

He moves to drying Steve off quick and then shifts back to the embracing of him, hugging him close under the towel, and Steve braces in advance against how hugging Eddie as tight as he gets in return will strain on his muscles—doesn’t matter.

Always fucking worth it.

Eddie squeezes him at the shoulders—so careful, the safest place to not cause hurt—and pulls back, wraps Steve up and gives him another quick scrub before leading him to the massage table and handing him a fresh set of longer, not-soaked boxer briefs, which: Kim, their head team PT and magical sports masseuse, will probably kill him for using it as a simple chair, but—they apparently let Eddie in, the logistics of which Steve’s not actively questioning just yet because he’s got this gift horse here, taking the best care of him whether he needs it or not, and the only way Steve’s looking him in the mouth is to kiss the hell out it.

Point being: Kim and the rest had to assume some degree of chaos would be left in the aftermath with Steve’s beloved partner involved.

“Water,” Eddie sticks a bottle in Steve’s hand once he’s sitting on the table, still-slightly-sad dick dutifully tucked away warm to recover. “Hydration is critical.”

And Eddie says it so clinically, like an expert, but also so damn earnestly, like a lover, and…fuck but Steve’s the luckiest sonofabitch in the world.

“Lay down.”

Steve quirks a brow.

“You had your hand in that water, you’d have to give me a little more recovery time before you want to try to defile Kim’s sacred table.”

“Dirty mind, my liege,” Eddie gasps, hand-to-chest theatrics firmly in place. “You cannot scandalize the peasantry when you yourself is perched rightly atop the only fainting couch in sight!”

Steve rolls his eyes, bites his lower lip against just how wide he wants to grin—encouraging Eddie’s dramatics might give Steve enough time to get a stiffy again but.

Even though they’re not in public per se, they’re not not in public. And Steve will have to face his coaches, fuck, then his whole team, both in the foreseeable future.

“Seriously though,” Eddie’s voice pokes through, a gentle hand on Steve’s bicep accompanying a much more even tone. “On your stomach first.”

Steve feels his brows raise again, higher this time.

“What for?”

Eddie looks at him, way too concerned for Steve’s question.

“You fell back and cracked your head, that was when they finally got those fuckers off you,” Eddie says, just a touch judgemental, like Steve is the confusing one, but then Eddie—whose hands have moved to maneuver Steve where he wants him—stills, eyes big as he pulls back to look Steve straight on:

“Right?” he asks it, almost…hesitant. Anxious. “Or was it something else, did they get you bad in the front, I know they got you all over but I thought the worst was—”

And his hands had started to go flappy like they do when he’s stressed, especially by surprise, like if he’d been wearing his rings they’d be throwing the fluorescents around like a light show—so Steve has to catch them. Has to lean and stop them and bring both hands together, draw them to his lips.

“Babe,” Steve whispers to Eddie’s fingertips before kissing at his palm: “I really am fine.” Eddie looks up through his lashes, fierce as he shoots back simply:

“The bruising says otherwise.”

And fuck all: those lashes make the whole thing unfair, the concept of trying to fight back with the truth is just…pointless. Moot by default. Dead on arrival.

Those lashes are fucking…they should be illegal. Steve adores them so goddamn much.

Eddie’s leaned down to kiss at Steve’s hands in return, to nuzzle them a little so Steve notices when he goes still again, just breathing with his hand caught between Steve’s; with his cheek on Steve’s skin there. Breathing deep; heavy but not unsteady.

It’s hard to read when he can’t see anything more.

“Babe?” he asks, because he needs to be sure Eddie’s okay—he wasn’t lying when he said his current predicament may have been the mother hen tendencies transferring via proximity.

“Where is it the worst?”

And Steve…of course Steve melts at those eyes glowing with only one thing brighter than concern:

Pure fucking devotion. Heart-pumping, soul-deep care.

“Back,” Steve reaches to stroke reassuringly from Eddie’s jawline down to the pulse point in his neck, soft against the pad of his thumb; “you were right.”

Eddie grabs Steve’s hand at the wrist and kisses the center of his palm before turning him the way he wants and…

Oh.

Oh, fuck, but he’s quick to get started at the last thing Steve expects. Despite…the obvious tells of the context, of what precisely he is lying down on.

Because the motions are familiar, the feel of them on his skin, down through his muscles with the targeted way they ache before they unlock, unwind, release with the rolling, crisscrossing pressure and holy fuck, it’s like Eddie’s got a direct line to Steve’s nerves—he does, kinda, and they know each other now better than either of them knows themselves, but not like this—because yeah, there’s bruising, but Eddie’s avoiding places Steve knows would be less obvious on the surface than they feel, Steve’s well aware which kinds of injuries show quick versus which ones simmer, but then Eddie also somehow knows where he needs working the most, and hell if he isn’t hitting every spot just right—

“Where’d you learn this?” Steve asks incredulous, because like, Eddie may be just about every possible flavor of melodramatic but, given his concern for Steve in his profession and his still-mind-boggling but absolutely genuine relishing of giving Steve all good things: for all the times Steve’s ended up banged to fuck way worse than this?

Eddie would never have held out on him.

“Natural talent,” Eddie says, and Steve can hear the way it curls coming out of his mouth, can picture in his head the way Eddie’s nose’ll have tipped a little haughtily up in the air. Fucking absurd man—and so Steve snorts accordingly.

Love of Steve’s whole goddamn life, though.

“I have my methods,” Eddie says, playfully cagey until he yelps when Steve stretches his hand just a little to catch Eddie’s thigh when he passes close enough to pinch.

It does the job though.

“We hired a sports masseuse to come with us on this leg,” Eddie admits, a little quieter but not like he’s one bit sorry about it; “she’s been showing me things, just basics,” and there, it’s like he almost tries to downplay it, what the fuck—

“But she’s been showing me how to do the best things for you.”

And Steve…Steve‘a a little fucking floored when that sinks in as a…real thing. That Eddie did.

For him. On top of all he’s done and is doing for him.

“You’ve been flying,” Steve puts together, the words syrup slow because Eddie isn’t a fan of flying, hates it even more without Steve next to him—if I’m going down, I want you next to me, he’d admittedly once, and Steve had dutifully told him he was morbid as shit but had maybe kissed him senseless for it anyway—but then what’s more:

“You’ve been flying private.”

It’d been weird when Steve found out they’d chartered one of the label’s jets on top of just abandoning the bus—Eddie always thought private travel was peak arrogance, very un-metal.

But such an aircraft would be necessary to carry a fucking massage table and an instructor to match, wouldn’t it?

“Kim vetted her,” Eddie adds, still a little hesitant with his words while never once letting up with his hands; “she doesn’t tolerate wasting time, so,” and Steve groans because fuck yeah, right there, and he hears Eddie’s grin when he adds on:

“I kinda had to learn fast.”

Steve wants to flip over and kiss this man until he’s at least half as bruised as Steve, in the best way, in the good places.

But Eddie’s really fucking talented with his hands, so Steve just moans appreciatively until Eddie slowly rotates him and eases him up slow.

“More water,” he wraps Steve’s noodle-languid hands around a water bottle, makes sure he’s got a grip and takes the cap off for him even before letting go and turning, something crinkling while his back is turned before Eddie’s hands are back and stretched out to Steve instructively; indulgently:

“And snack.”

He hands Steve a mostly unwrapped protein bar: Peanut Honeycomb, his favorite.

Somehow, in the face of everything Eddie’s done so far tonight, that punches Steve in the center of his chest with pure, unfettered feeling.

Like, just that little thing. To get Steve his favorite flavor protein bar, which is like a fucking store brand so Eddie either ordered that shit in advance, or just…carries them, maybe.

It’s not just a little thing, is all.

It’s closer to being kinda…everything.

“Now, they say low intensity activity is recommended, to keep up the blood flow so you can…stitch together and stuff,” Eddie’s preoccupied enough to miss Steve biting his tongue to get his emotions under control for at least just now, holding out his hand for the now-empty wrapper and getting that out of the way as he talks in perpetual motion. “Probably not immediately, but,” Eddie dances his lithe fingers over Steve’s thighs, baffling as to the intent until he pushes near the backs of his knees and Steve…doesn’t flinch.

And Eddie grins wolfish as fuck.

“All the things I’ve read agree,” he carries on and it takes Steve a second to get back to what Eddie had been saying before grasping firm but so, so attentive around his knees as he—

Slides to his own knees and eases Steve’s blessedly-recovered-to-room-temperature cock out of the sport-cut shorts, then a little further: and Steve gets with the program—fucking low intensity activity, goddamn—just as Eddie skips deftly over his quickly hardening length and delicately licks at the curves of his balls, reaching back to cradle them to his lips almost tenderly, kind of…massaging them with his mouth.

Low intensity, yeah, sure.

Tell that shit to the building tension in Steve’s groin, and the similarly-building momentum of his pulse, goddamn.

Hell of a way to keep up the blood flow.

“Muscular relaxation is definitely optimal, so,” Eddie nuzzles the now-damp skin and hums into the space between where his dick strains up and his sac hangs waiting, and Steve doesn’t mean it as discouragement when he hisses:

“Someone could come in!”

More like…commentary. A heads-up. A reminder.

Eddie kisses that intimate little gap where he’s breathing in deliberately, the fucker, and driving Steve a little fucking crazy for it.

“They’re not going to,” he assures, unbothered before he adds:

“I brought Hopper.”

Steve probably would comment quickly and meaningfully on the point of Eddie bringing his head of security, if his head were in the game just now, but Eddie’s gone back to rolling Steve’s balls over his tongue, and has added a hand teasing at the slick slit of him and just, just…

Goddamn.

Steve’s usually got pretty reliable stamina, sometimes too much depending on the goal or the timeframe, but that also means Eddie’s long become an expert at circumventing it when it proves a detriment. And even if he’s nowhere near rushed, no touch on Steve’s body anything but gentle and careful and something like cherishing: even then?

Of course Eddie’s able to get him to the edge quick, especially with those lips on his balls—Steve’s weak as shit for that.

Add in the way Eddie presses in just the slightest bit more, the wetter the head of Steve’s cock gets? Fuck: he was never gonna last.

When Eddie’s mouth and hand swap seconds before Steve’s coming to make sure he shoots straight down Eddie’s throat, palm cupped light around his balls like precious things as they release, all in perfect time just for the way Eddie can read his body?

Yeah, okay: low intensity activity, right, check that off. Steve didn’t lift a finger.

And muscle relaxation? Double check. Holy fuck.

Now Eddie’s hands are gentling up Steve’s chest as he catches his breath a little, he’s not gasping but he’s definitely not not a smidge overwhelmed, and not even just for the physicality of it all. Maybe not even mostly for that.

So he grabs Eddie’s hands against his chest for a second, then pulls, his point unmistakable: get the fuck up here next to me, you perfect fucking insane man.

Eddie, of course, does not disappoint—still careful though. It’s…it never fails to strike Steve, not as a surprise anymore—that ship’s long since set sail—but it strikes him how a man who’s never not been the most cup-runneth-over for attention can be so single-minded when it comes to the care and keeping of Steve, of all people.

But Steve’s arms are mostly fine so he scoots to make room for Eddie, cares all of jack shit about how the motion stings because that’s so fucking distant from mattering just now, Steve needs Eddie next to him, and Eddie eyes him a second, to make sure he can fit where Steve’s inviting him to lay down on his arm so he can be wrapped in it appropriately—make sure he can fit to his own estimation of Steve’s wellness for the task—but eventually Steve must pass the test before Eddie’s lowering himself slow, gentle: and the second he’s low enough Steve rolls him against his side, fuck the bruises, and tucks this impossible man under his chin.

“Did you really bring Hopper to keep my own team out of their locker room?” Steve asks his curls, mostly a whisper which gives everything that lives under it away.

Not that Steve needs, or wants, to ever hide it.

“I brought Hopper so he’d be roped into sports-ball talk so no one would notice they were being kept from their locker room,” Eddie drags his lips against Steve’s shoulders, warm and wet and Steve tries not to sink too deep into thoughts of where that mouth had just been, and what it’s been doing.

“I called Elle, and talked to Kim,” Eddie helpfully distracts him; “asked if I could come take care of you first, if you were okay enough that you didn’t need the whole medical entourage.”

“Asked,” Steve’s skepticism is blatant and…fuck if it isn’t endeared as shit, all the same.

“Mmhmm. Politely, too,” Eddie nods so that his hair tickles under Steve’s chin.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Steve half-snorts, though: if Eddie did go through their very sweet but notoriously unswayable PR lead, who deigned to pass him over to Kim, single-minded in game-mode as she is, who in turn agreed to take the call?

Okay, so. Maybe.

Steve honestly doesn’t know which possibility makes him feel more bubbling-over adoration for Eddie more.

“That’s why they’ve let us be?” Steve lets the simple question land steeped in all that feeling, and the rise of color on Eddie’s cheeks just where Steve can make out where he’s still tucked close, makes it clear that it lands just like Steve hoped.

“Mmm,” and the rumble from Eddie’s lips is so fucking sweet against the line of Steve’s throat; “not that I don’t trust them, they’re fucking rockstars,” and that’s some high fucking praise from the literal rockstar, Steve will have to remember to share it; “I just…”

And Eddie huffs out all the breath in his lungs on a whine Steve doesn’t think means to be broken, but ends up that way nonetheless. It twinges something so much worse and deeper in Steve’s chest than any bruising, any superficial wound as he wraps Eddie just a little bit closer; a little bit tighter.

“I’m okay, babe,” he whispers after a long stretch of moments just existing in proximity, pressed up against proof-of-life, alongside living-breathing warmth.

“Thank fuck,” Eddie finally sighs out all the built up tension left in him, warm against Steve’s bare skin as he whispers, confesses:

“I was scared, Stevie,” and the words are small, but they are…they’re like their own form of catharsis. They’re carrying the fear they speak out of Eddie’s system by the syllable:

“Getting over here, I was,” and his voice does crack there, and Steve buries his face harder in Eddie’s curls, kisses him there and lets him just breathe until he gathers the rest of that fear to purge one last time:

“I was so scared.”

Steve brings a hand up to stroke through Eddie’s hair, massage at his scalp with blunted nails the way he likes best until his breaths come easy, until the weight of him’s a loose and languid thing.

“How much longer you think we got?” Steve eventually murmurs into those messy curls, punctuates it with a kiss, unhurried, at the beginning and end of the question.

“Hop’s the only contact I approved to bypass the ‘Do Not Disturb’ on my phone,” Eddie answers, wholly unbothered; “he is contractually obligated to give us a five-minute warning.”

So Steve just settles back into stroking Eddie’s hair and relishing the way his husband-to-be leans into it, preens wordlessly for the touch, and it’s a little bit wild because yeah, truthfully: Steve did think everyone had been overreacting. He’s been bruised worse falling off a fucking roof (one time, Henderson—one fucking time).

But even if it was minor by comparison to a whole hell of a lot worse encounters he’s had on the ice?

Steve can’t really feel anything but Eddie warmth, and the way it seeps into his own veins like it’s shared by rote.

Because, well: it kinda is.

♥️

✨also on ao3

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here @pukner @ravenfrog @rebellatlas @sadisticaltarts @samsoble @sanctumdemunson @shrimply-a-menace @slashify @stealthysteveharrington @swimmingbirdrunningrock @theheadlessphilosopher @theintrovertedintrovert @themoonagainstmers @theohohmoment @tillystealeaves @tinyloonyteacups @tinyplanet95