#-.V rules

[toomanydamnmuses]

((Making this a pinned post for those on mobile who may have trouble accessing the rules & muse list))

RULES & ABOUT MUN

General

1. PG-13 level is preferred, but I am willing to go NSFW level at times, depending on the content.

2. Swear words will be few and far between, depending on the muse of course.

3. Considering the fandom, violence is to be expected.

4. Open to AUs, canon, crossovers if I know the fandom, etc.

5. If you do not specify a muse in asks, you are automatically going to get Urahara as a response (unless another muse feels inclined to answer, but it’s usually Urahara anyways)

6. Highly Selective and private. If we are not mutuals, I will not interact in threads or one-liners. You can send in asks, but that will not guarantee a response. 

7. I do not interact with OCs, with a few exceptions: if we already know each other and have spoken for quite some time, and have had at least one semi-long thread together. Then, and only then, will I interact with your OC. Otherwise, please do not approach me. 

Shipping

8.Multi-ship for any gender. But there has to  be chemistry. Different muses have different sexualities as well, so make sure to discuss with me.

9.TO BE REPEATED FOR THE BACK: THERE MUST BE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN OUR MUSES FOR ANY AND ALL SHIPPING! There must also be chemistry between us muns, if I don’t feel as though we get along, then there won’t be a ship!

10. Any sexual or romantic relationships between muses where there is not chemistry are not ok with me! ALSO! Any/all ships of that sort where it may not necessarily be healthy, ie forced/hypnotism/etc are included amongst those that I am not comfortable with doing. One of the few exceptions is Gin/Izuru, and that is only because Izuru will be eagerly consenting.

11. No hypnotism interactions at all unless it is Aizen, and we have discussed beforehand. Not only that, but when I say hypnotism in regards to Aizen, I mean it in the context of what his zanpakuto does: changes your senses, but does not make you his slave.

12. If you are a minor, just leave. Close the tab, and get off of my blog. I will not interact with you. If your muse is a minor, we may have some discussion. In general, I am very uncomfortable with child muses. My definition of minor, for muns at the very least, is if you are BELOW THE AGE OF 21.

Courtesy

13.  If we start interacting and at any point you decide to unfollow, I will not hunt you down to demand a response or anything like that. Once I notice that you have unfollowed, I will just quietly unfollow in return and go about my business. In return, I ask that you grant me the same courtesy if I choose to unfollow first for any reason.

14. If you are the type who likes to plot, that is fine. I myself am someone who sets the muses loose and see what happens, but I can plot too. I am flexible that way.

15. Please keep in mind that mun is a fulltime student, and also have health problems and other RL situations that can sometimes get in the way. Replies can take a while, so please be patient.

16. When you reply to something I have tagged you in, such as a thread, or if you have replied to one of my asks, I will sometimes, if not always like it. The like is my way of letting you know that I have seen it, and that I will be working on my own reply (or moving it to a thread in the case of asks) as soon as I am able. In other words: it’s your sign that it is now either in my drafts or queue. But I don’t always remember to like it, as my memory is fault at best. Please feel free to come and ask me if I’ve seen it!

17. Another thing to note is that most if not all of these muses have a tendency to interact with each other. I will try to tag things appropriately, and please let me know when there is a muse that you would not like to interact with so I can try to avoid letting them poke their noses into threads that they don’t belong in.

18. My memory is extremely fickle, because of a variety of things that I have been through over the years. I will not always remember to tag things, between how little triggers me and the fact that I forget more often than not, so please proceed with caution. If you need me to tag something, let me know. If it is down in writing (typed) in a chat or something where I can look over it again, there is a better chance of me remembering. But also remember that it is up to you to remind me if I mess up, especially since I am warning you now about my memory. Be polite and respectful, and I will grant the same in return. I am only human and I will do my best to accommodate you, but it is not my job to remember all of anyone’s triggers, it is up to you to remind me if needed, or have them somewhere that I can find easily.

19. I myself am not triggered by a whole lot, but I will ask you to please tag things like sexual assault. On a good day I can handle it just fine, on a bad day I cannot, and if I am caught off-guard by it (IE an ask sent that talks about it) without necessarily expecting to see it, that can and will trigger me. Most anything else is fair game, though you can always come and ask me.

Blocking

19. I will reserve the right to block you if at any point I begin to feel uncomfortable, if you break my rules despite multiple warnings, or if I find out that you are a minor and have lied about your age. I may not always let you know that you have been blocked.

20. I try to live with the “3 strikes” rule. Which is to say, I will give you two warnings if you break my rules, the third time and you will be blocked. Depending on the severity and what rule you broke or whatever reason I may have for wanting to block you, it may be either a softblock or a hardblock. 

Mun

My name is Starry, she/her, and I am of age. As mentioned previously, I am a full-time student at a university. Beyond that, there isn’t much for you to know. Should we become close and I trust you, I might tell you more.

MAIN MUSES

Izuru Kira

Shuuhei Hisagi

Kisuke Urahara

SECONDARY MUSES

Renji Abarai

Ikkaku Madarame

Gin Ichimaru

Grimmjow Jeagerjaques

Akon (Squad 12)

Rikuu Togakushi

BY REQUEST ONLY MUSES

Tesla Lindocruz

Nnoitra Gilga

Ulquiorra Cifer

Shunsui Kyoraku

Sousuke Aizen

Szayelaporro Granz

Rangiku Matsumoto

Shinji Hirako

Uryuu Ishida

Kenpachi Zaraki

Coyote Starrk

Byakuya Kuchiki

Yumichika Ayasegawa

Juushiro Ukitake

Ichigo Kurosaki

Rukia Kuchiki

Kensei Muguruma

Rojuro (Rose) Otoribashi

Interest checker

[iffingly]

brotherly bonding time

[shaykesqueer]

Things we know about Papa V Perpetua:

Their name is Papa V Perpetua

They like Black Sabbath so much I guess they said to hell with announcing themselves on their own tour

Purple?

Cannot open doors

[rhaenyras-alicent]

can't stop thinking abt the concept of arthur hearing about this 'emrys' throughout different occasions here and there in the beginning of s4, and at first not thinking much of it, then when the name keeps getting repeated from different villains/sorcerers he interacts with, it finally catches his attention and he becomes genuinely concerned. he makes it a bit of a personal mission to find out who he is, but it's all a very lowkey side plot that's not the main focus (think of the 'traitor' arc also in s4). of course he talks about it with merlin, but to avoid suspicion, merlin shuts him down every time and tries to make him think this mysterious sorcerer is nothing to worry about.

as more time goes on, and the more arthur learns about this powerful sorcerer always protecting him from harm, and as much as he hates to admit this to anyone, most of all himself, as he's only ever been taught to hate magic and anything to do with it- he starts realizing 'emrys' is less of this evil entity that he has to hunt down and kill, and more of a guardian angel that he has genuine interest now in getting to meet. which would also be interesting in terms of contradicting morgana's plot in the same season.

then, in the s4 finale, something that merlin does or says at the end makes him finally connect the dots. he says nothing. the season closes with him just.......... left with the unbearable conflict of it all. the feeling of absolute betrayal from his own friend- the closest person to him that he turned out to not really Know at all, the anger at being lied to and his own obliviousness, all with also the gratitude to this man who has been protecting him without asking for anything in return, the confusion of why he's doing any of it, and the question deep down whether he even deserves it. he is just. left with so many questions and contradicting feelings that he just... says nothing. and we are left with this as the cliffhanger for s4's ending.

[s0fter-sin]

one of my favourite aspects of supernatural that you very rarely see in paranormal shows is that sam and dean are already versed in the world they live in. there’s no sudden discovery of ghosts and demons and now they have to learn about them along with the audience; they are born into it and already know all about it. it allows the audience to follow their personal story instead of also trying to figure out this new world and its rules

the first season is full of knowledge we never see them learn; “w*ndigoes are in the minnesota woods or- or northern michigan. i’ve never even heard of one this far west.” […] “great. well then this [his gun] is useless.” (1x02), “you don’t break a curse. you get the hell out of its way.” (1x08), d: “it’s a god. a pagan god, anyway.” […] “the annual cycle of its killings? and the fact that the victims are always a man and a woman. like some kind of fertility right.” […] s: “the last meal. given to sacrificial victims. d: “yeah, i’m thinking a ritual sacrifice to appease some pagan god.” (1x11)

almost every episode in the first season is a monster they’ve faced before that they then explain to the audience in a way that should feel patronising; like it’s the same speech given over and over again but instead, the audience almost feels included in the knowledge. it’s stated with such an innate confidence and comfort in said knowledge that it feels like we already knew it too; “spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. if they want inside, they just go through the walls.” […] “the claws, the speed that it moves; could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog.” (1x02), “it's biblical numerology. you know noah's ark, it rained for forty days. the number means death.” (1x04), “no no no, not the reaper, a reaper. there's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on earth, it goes by 100 different names.” […] “you said it yourself that the clock stopped, right? reapers stop time. and you can only see 'em when they're coming at you which is why i could see it and you couldn't.” (1x12)

they already know and, at least in the first season, already have what they need to kill whatever they’re hunting; already know to salt and burn bones for spirits, fire for a w*ndigo, exorcisms for demons, a silver bullet to the heart for shapeshifters. there’s only three times in the entire first season that they run into something new to them; 1x14 when sam gets his first vision that leads him to another psychic, 1x16 when dean calls caleb for help on the sigil he put together and he tells him about daevas, and 1x20 when they find out vampires are real- and they only don’t know that bc john thought they were hunted to extinction and not worth mentioning

(there’s also technically two half instances if you count one of them knowing something the other doesn’t - sam figuring out the tulpa in 1x17 and dean already knowing about the shtriga in 1x18 - but those still rely on sam and dean having prior knowledge)

even when they’re uncertain about facing something, it’s not bc they don’t know what it is; it’s precisely bc they know what it is and acknowledge that it’ll be a difficult hunt (“i don't know, man. this isn't our normal gig. i mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. this is big. and i wish dad was here.” 1x04)

so much of the tension in paranormal shows typically comes from the main character(s) not knowing what is happening to them/the people around them and having to find out how to resolve it. supernatural is unique in that it operates more like a police procedural. the tension comes from solving the clues and identifying patterns to figure out who (what) the killer is and intercepting before they can take another victim

it’s such a different tone to go for when compared to other shows that came both before, during, and after its run. it sets sam and dean on even footing with each other since they both have the same knowledge going in, and it puts them in a place of authority usually reserved for an outside character

the shows i compare spn to most is charmed, buffy and teen wolf; every main character in those shows are brought into the paranormal world knowing nothing, putting them on the same level as the audience, and they have their mc interact with others already knowledgeable about that world in order to overcome their problem/monster of the week. the audience organically learns about this new world as the characters learn about it. it’s a sound writing strategy that prevents “as we already know”-style exposition but something that complicates it is if your world building isn’t unique or intriguing enough, this slow introduction can become boring

we’ve seen shows like these before; sitting through the same tropes of characters learning to use their powers, struggling with no longer feeling normal/relating to the regular world around them, and not knowing how much they can trust the people already involved in this new world gets repetitive. all three shows eventually reach the same level of comfort with their new world that spn starts with but if the characters aren’t enough to draw you in, you can end up dropping it before they reach that point (and often, before the overarching plot can really kick in and evolve the show beyond the villain of the week format)

it’s the superhero origin movie in tv format; dragged out and overplayed. dropping the audience into an established world of course comes with its own problems but you also have the benefit of pre-existing established character dynamics that let the audience slot in like they’ve always been there instead of just getting to know all the characters while the characters also get to know each other

sam and dean already knowing about the supernatural lets the audience immediately get to the core of the story; the conflict between sam and dean, the search for their father, and the mystery of what killed their mother

[jeonsupershy]

wonboo for @wonboos 🧡🐈🍊

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Badash at NCRM:

Republicans ground the House to a halt Wednesday afternoon after U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) objected to remarks made by Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA), during which he delivered a short overview of the 88 criminal charges Donald Trump is facing, and civil court findings including one deeming him an adjudicated rapist. “Take down his words,” Congresswoman Houchin declared, interrupting Rep. McGovern. “I demand that his words be taken down.” For more than one hour, according to Fox News’ Chad Pergram, the people’s business stopped as Republicans, angered by the Democrat’s factual remarks, had them investigated by the House Parliamentarian. “Donald Trump might want to be a king, but he is not a king,” Congressman McGovern observed. “He is not a presumptive king. he’s not even the president – he’s a presumptive nominee.”

“At some point,” McGovern told his congressional colleagues, “it’s time for this body to recognize that there is no precedent for this situation. We have a presumptive nominee for President facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it. These are not alternative facts. These are real facts. A candidate for President of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the election. He’s also charged with stealing classified information and a jury has already found him liable for rape and a civil court. And yet, in this Republican controlled House, it’s okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham.” The decision to strike McGovern’s “offensive” remarks appears to have come from U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-AL), who was presiding over the chamber. He cited House Rule XVII, which Pergram reported “says House members are prohibited from impugning the motives of fellow House members, senators or the President. And in this case, the former President.”

Earlier, before Rep. Houchin demanded his remarks be stricken, McGovern also blasted Republicans for traveling to New York in their “cult uniforms,” to show support for Donald Trump at his criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. The Massachusetts Democrat told his colleagues, “my friends over the other side of the aisle have pandered to their most extreme members over and over and over again. They let the extremists kick out their own Speaker. They let the extremists dictate the agenda on the House floor. They let the extremists take down seven rule votes since January 2023 – a stunning indictment of their ability to get anything done. And speaking of indictments, Republicans are skipping their real jobs to take day trips up to New York to try to undermine Donald Trump’s criminal trial. No time to work with Democrats, but plenty of time to put on weird matching cult uniforms and stand behind President Trump with their bright red ties like pathetic props.”

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)’s speech on the House floor calling out criminal defendant Donald Trump was delivering truth bombs left and right, and it made Republicans upset, especially the part in which he said that Trump “might want to be a king, but he is not a king” and the fact that he was calling out his criminality.

Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) was the Republican who ordered a frivolous halt to McGovern’s speech by demanding “that his words be taken down.” Floor Presider Jerry Carl (R-AL) granted Houchin’s request, and McGovern was barred from speaking on the Floor for the rest of the day.

See Also:

NBC News: Democrat McGovern ruled 'out of order' after listing off Trump's legal woes on the House floor

Daily Kos: GOP brings House to a halt to debate whether facts are allowed

[hitlikehammers]

🧋That One Time It Went Soulmate v. Soulmate, Double-or-Nothing Between 🍦Robin and Eddie🎸, Because No One Could Deserve Robin’s Plantonic Soulmate EVER, but Eddie Can (and WILL) Count The Ways That He’ll Fucking ✨TRY✨

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

Robin’s staring openly at him after he places their order with an extra shake to go—to take home with him for when Steve gets off work.

“You sure that’s what he wants?”

Eddie turns to her slowly.

“He’s my favorite person in the world,” Eddie says simply; “I know what his favorite flavor is.”

In fairness: it does change. He has a baseline that’s good always but, this time of year, the chill in the air? After a shift, especially one without Robin? Here, from this diner, with its stupidly weird-ass menu?

Caramel Waffle. No question.

“Hmm,” Robin hums around her straw as they go to take a seat—he’ll grab Steve’s when they’re done so it’s not melted to fuck before he can get it in a freezer.

“So,” she pops her lips together as he slides in across from her—he was waiting for this tone. She’d been cagey all afternoon. They hang out enough on their own for him to have clocked it when he picked her up: she had a mission. An agenda.

Eddie was pretty sure from the jump that both of those things were just…him.

He just wasn’t sure yet about the why.

“I want you to know that it is not out of a lesser opinion of you, or our friendship, that I am asking you this,” she starts, almost businesslike but he also sees how earnestly she means it; “and honestly I am cautiously optimistic on all fronts, but,” she bites her lip before straightening up a bit and tilting her chin, full-on resolute.

“He’s too important,” she says it, uncompromising. “And cautious optimism is not sufficient.” She nods to herself, takes what looks like a fortifying drink of her milkshake and then forges into…something not wholly unlike battle:

“What are your intentions toward my Platonic Soulmate?”

Eddie’d figured it was Steve; the mission. The agenda.

Even when they hang out on their own, Steve’s too big a part of both of them for him to ever be absent. Not for real.

But, this particular mission? Like…

“We exchanged rings, Birdie,” Eddie says, kinda at a loss; “you were there.”

She was the witness-they-didn’t-technically-need and the best-woman-that-counted-for-everything when they very-not-legally threw a barbecue to pledge for always out loud with the people they loved, when as many of those people as possible could gather and see it and know it—make it feel a fraction as big as it is in Eddie’s chest, for some slice of the world to know it explicitly, out loud.

And see it.

Robin purses her lips and stares him down, unimpressed.

“You know what I mean.”

And…yeah. If he thinks on it, he…probably does.

He doesn’t agree that it’s necessary by any means but: he can agree that Steve is too important for anything to be left to assumptions; to just ‘cautious’ anything.

Steve deserves only whole-hearts. All-in. Absolute certainty for always, when it comes to loving. To keeping and cherishing.

To having and holding.

So what she means is more than the rings. Goes beyond the so-called honeymoon period everyone’s got a comment about, which Eddie refuses to call as such, or acknowledge as anything like that at all, because like…okay, look.

His heart feels easy in his chest, now, in a way it never had before Steve. It felt that way on the worst days of PT, through the worst of the pain. It felt that way sometimes even that first time trudging through hell, without even knowing the man. Eddie hadn’t even realized his heart was all sludged up and calcified until he looked at Steve and it shivered so hard that all of that gunk sloughed off and he was made brand new.

That’s not a honeymoon period. That’s the start of the rest of his whole fucking life, where a certain vibrant level of joy is the baseline. Is their rule.

But, for someone outside Eddie’s chest: he understands. Robin means past that thing she thinks she’s seeing. She means…past Hawkins. Past the Upside Down and all the heartache. Past…forever.

What are his…

“I don’t think I believed people had souls, in like, the sense that people say it?” Eddie starts, because Robin of all people deserves the fullest truth he can offer.

Also—and fuck if he ever admits it out loud—but it’s also because if she’s gonna question his heart, in this, no matter how entitled she is to make sure?

She can damn well be subjected to the full extent of his capacity to wax poetic upon just how overwhelmingly, impossibly, marrow-deep in love he is.

“Definitely not the churchy sense,” he clarifies with a wave of the hand; “I thought they were abstract, just a word for an idea, y’know?”

She knows—she’s told him that she felt something of the same.

Before Steve.

“But he made me believe in them,” Eddie says, and fuck you, maybe his voice is already a little shaky, but he wants her to know how honest he is, how committed he is, how deep his runs—just like how she learned what it was to be Steve’s soulmate, too.

“Because it’s the very real thing that makes me feel alive like I never knew I could feel,” and his left hand reaches up a little awkward to his chest to feel what it is to be alive that big with his own palm, and the sensation of it against the ring on his previously so-long-empty finger there, now the safe-keeper of Steve’s Grandad’s ring, the one he paid some fancy jeweller with his own paycheck—we will use my family’s money, together, he’d told Eddie later, days into what actually was their literal honeymoon; this is from me, like, from my heart to yours and if Eddie’d cried a little about it, naked between rounds in their hotel bed, and if he’d kissed Steve senseless about it a lot at the same time? Damn right he should have—but pressing his hand to his chest with the now-familiar weight and warmth of that ring?

Fuck, but does he feel alive. And as far as his soul goes?

“He is where mine lives.”

It’s Steve. It’s all Steve.

“Or how mine lives. How it came to be,” Eddie still hasn’t puzzled it out entirely, the specifics; isn’t sure if he ever will. “Or both.”

Not that it matters, really. It might be the only puzzle in his whole fucking life that his brain’s willing to let lie not-wholly solved, because again: whatever the details could possibly be, they’d just lead back to a piece or part of a single entity.

The singular love of his life.

“I will kill you if you hurt him,” Robin jolts him back into the now, where he thinks maybe more silence has gathered than he thought, between the last words he did say and now.

She looks at him…not mean, not like daggers: more just really honest. Wide-eyed and more serious than he’s ever watched her be, even when they were almost certainly walking toward their own deaths in battle.

“Please do,” Eddie answers her, automatic. That is, like, not a hard thing to figure out a response to.

“Like, they’ll never find the body,” Robin leans forward over the table, almost knocks her milkshake over and frowns as she slides it aside further out of her way and takes her position again: “I’m serious.”

“Me too,” Eddie says simply before taking a long suck of his milkshake. “If I hurt him, the way you’re talking?” He spreads his arms and gestures wide to himself, all his most vulnerable parts on display because, like:

“Do me the favor. Please.”

He hopes it’d still be easy, splayed with all his squishy vital parts to hit, just bone in the way; hopes all the scar tissue wouldn’t make the job too difficult.

“Why?” Robin asks, a little…not sharp exactly.

Pointed.

But Eddie doesn’t understand why the question of whyeven needs to be asked, especially from her. It’s fucking obvious.

“If I hurt him?” Eddie shrugs, takes a sip again of his shake to keep his throat from getting too thick with any emotions at…entertaining an impossible thing.

“If I did that, I wouldn’t deserve him anymore, even if I didn’t automatically drive him away by default, for the hurting. I’d lose him either way,” and the shake doesn’t even taste right for how wrong those words feel, the bile underneath them, but it’s still mostly making the horrible words…easier.

Given the topic.

Because Eddie doesn’t care really for himself like that—though Steve, outside this unnerving and frankly fucking stomach-churning hypothetical and instead in the blissful beautiful now: Steve would get all frowny at him and scold him like one of his no-longer-little-nuggets for making idiotic choices or saying dumbass things—but Steve isn’t here.

And Eddie means this shit.

“I don’t really know if I’d even want to,” he swallows hard, thankful for the cold of the shake to keep his wits somewhat together; keep him on task to the fucking point: “to be a person, without a soul,” he leans back in the seat and crosses his arms over the squishy bits of him now, because in the now he hasn’t done anything to jeopardize the best thing that’s every fucking happened to him; that ever will.

“Not now that I know what it’s like to live with one, like this.”

And Eddie feels his lips curving at…well. Basically it’s kind of unavoidable, trying to keep a smile off his face when he thinks on Steve:

“Like this. With him.”

Robin matches him, leaning back and crossing her arms, eyeing him oddly.

“It’s not healthy to base your life around whether another person’s in it.”

“Says the platonic soulmate,” Eddie literally snorts, glad he’s not drinking for it—ice cream up the nose fucking sucks; “sounds like those codependency talks your parents were sneaking in took root somewhere, if you’re spouting them back at me.”

Eddie may not have been present for the months post-Starcourt where the Buckleys had struggled with whether Steve was a suitor or a playboy, for how often he and their daughter dogged each other’s steps, but he’s heard the stories. He knows it took them a while to…if not entirely understand it, at least to accept it.

Steve’s been known to watch the game with her dad when Wayne’s not home. Steve plies her mom with baked goods that she used to signal her acceptance of him, her welcome even, after breaking down to ask for recipes.

He gave them to her, or most of them, but won her fully over by promising he’d never be so far away not to make them for her himself.

“I never said I believed it,” Robin grouses, a little defensive; “let alone agreed with it. It was just a statement.”

Eddie expected as much. But he’s not above wanting to poke holes in her flimsy-ass attempt to set him off-balance. To…test him, however she’s trying to.

“But that’s not what I meant.”

He knew that, too. But he’s not absolutely sure what she meant instead.

Despite his myriad suspicions. He does have a formidable knack for imagining potential scenarios.

“I would have answered the same way, so,” Robin huffs; “I didn’t need that ‘why’.”

Eddie bites back a little smirk at her streak of indignation—not the time.

He’s actually getting better at that. Appropriate timing. It helps, appreciating what it means to have so many people he loves.

And then, one person who defines all that love is, all on his own. Every breath he breathes.

“I meant,” Robin finally leans in again, pins him with her stare, with meaning; “why do you love him?”

He doesn’t…expect that. Not from Robin.

But her tone doesn’t question it. Doesn’t question her dearest friend, her closest confidant, her Captial-P soulmate.

She’s…not testing him. But she is weighing him.

And somehow that’s very different.

“Why?” he still can’t help but huff a laugh. “How does anyone not?”

She squares her shoulders, but as formidable as she makes herself, as formidable as she is, her eyes are all heartbreak. But the protective kind.

“A lot of people are stupid,” she spits; “have been so goddamn stupid.”

Eddie knows she doesn’t mean him. It’s not directed his way. He agrees with her, and appreciates that if the time ever comes, he has the best second in command at his side to stand guard for the heart he loves more than his own.

He gets what she means, why she’s asking—why any of this is happening, today.

She’s seen more than him, but not even half, betweenthem, of the people so stupid, so reckless as to trample his beautiful husband’s heart.

Their soulmate’s heart.

And now that he gets it, he has so many ways to ease whatever fears she has, concerns that aren’t about him, but linger because she cares that much.

He can easily give her what she’s looking for.

“I love his smile,” Eddie says with his own, because it’s not about the way it looks, so much as the lights that glow through in him for it. “I love when he hugs me,” he’s so good at it, it makes a man feel safe as much as cherished, protected with strength and cradled with care. He feels Steve’s heartbeat against his sometimes like that, held close enough, pressed tight enough.

“And then when he < I>holds me,” when it’s all of that, but more. Longer. Sustained and Eddie can drown in it. In him.

“He kisses like it’s an Olympic sport where he’s the reigning gold medalist for always,” because sure, Eddie hadn’t had a vast amount of experience but he’d been kissed, even if only dirty and sloppy and never any further, but he’d thought they been at least decent.

Little did he fucking know.

“But then, at the same time he treats it like it’s his favorite pastime.”

Because Steve doesn’t just deal in the breathtaking, world-rewriting approach; he also dives in thorough, devoted down to his cells.

Breathtaking, world-rewriting all in its own unfathomable way.

“His laugh,” and Eddie’s smile grows as his chest feels like it expands, like it always finds a way to do just when Eddie thinks it can’t swell any more, like, for the laws of physics.

He did eventually pass physics, but. They never covered anything to do with love.

And even if they had, it couldn’t have been the kind of love Eddie feels, now.

“The way his brow furrows when he’s confused, or frustrated, like he,” and Eddie sees it, the little crinkles, the soft sparkling behind his eyes as he tries to sort something out behind them, like the fires of his mind at work, and it’s a beautiful thing.

“But mostly so I get to smooth it out,” Eddie admits because: it’s a beautiful thing. And it’s likewise a temptation.

All of Steve is kind of both at the same time, always.

“I love that he lets me take care of him,” and not just for the way it makes him feel proud of being trusted that much, where so few have ever passed the bar for entry into the magic of who Steve is, in his wholeness.

“Not least because taking care if him is one if the best things in the whole world,” because Steve doesn’t hide anything anymore, and he’s so open, so honest with every vulnerable piece, and Eddie feels like he could conquer the world with the might of that confidence, that faith; “like when your heart and your mind and your body all align right and agree, this is what you were made for,” and he believes that. He was built to meet Steve Harrington, and to be bound to every part of him. To be his partner in all things. To love and to honor and to cherish. For all of time.

“I love him for seeing me,” because it works both ways, and the feeling of having Steve is only rivalled in perfect measure by what it feels like to be had and held by Steve in kind: “and letting me see him.”

Always together. It still steals Eddie’s breath almost painful, but too sweet to ever try and tamp it down.

“I love falling asleep on his chest,” Eddie’s eyes close of their own accord, can feel it like that’s where he is, here and now, the bed of curls between those delectable nipples, the softness of his skin. “He runs so warm, like just, like when his heart beats, it’s pumping safety and comfort as a rule and when you’re pressed against him, it just emanates into you,” and that’s it, that’s exactly it.

“I love his heartbeat,” not just because he’d sought it out with desperate need after their last fight with the monsters, when it’d been Steve they almost lost. “Like the sound, when I’m against him,” because now, it’s a lullaby, an embrace, a declaration, every assurance Eddie doesn’t strictly need anymore but never passes up an opportunity to listen to and bask in, every opportunity he gets.

“I love how it feels when,” he starts, pauses when Robin’s face scrunches a little, like she’s bracing for a blow and it clicks, what she’s expecting.

He…wasn’t not going to at least skirt the edges of that part of their relationship. What often comes before he sleeps on Steve’s chest. But.

“Don’t worry, Birdie,” he assures her, dramatically folding his hands over hers with cloying sincerity; “I won’t defile your virgin ears.”

“If I have to listen to the retelling of your sexploits from him,” Robin smacks his hands away with a grimace; “I think once is enough.”

Eddie cackles as Robin groans.

“More than.”

He waves her off as he catches her breath; he won’t make her relive it herself. He’d love to, for his own sake and enjoyment but, he does love Robin. He doesn’t want to orchestrate her torture.

At least not today.

“I love how he eats his breakfast,” how he starts with a rich boy’s manners and ends like a starving man, with bits of egg on his cheek.

“I love how he brushes his teeth,” smearing toothpaste around first then going back to brush in tiny circles all around.

“I love how weirdly and, like, inhumanly quick he does his hair?” It’s record setting, seriously, like how can you get that height and that coif so perfect so fast. “But then how what always makes him almost late is picking the right shoes.”

Robin laughs, then reins herself back; it’s true though. How the clearly color-coded collections of the same fucking tennis shoes befuddle him for choice is hilarious, but so fucking endearing as hell.

“I love how I can tell him that I love him,” because for one, and the least of it all: Eddie never thought he’d find himself in a future where that was even the slightest possibility. But when it’s Steve? When it’s…when it’s this, with Steve?

When Steve lets Eddie love him? And flushes and smiles and melts for it, every goddamn time? Because of Eddie, and the size of Eddie’s love, or however much of it can be conveyed in the dearly limited medium of puny words?

“It’s him, but it’s,” Eddie shakes his head, beaming stupidly he knows, feels it in his cheeks, tugging his scars—he knows, but see, he couldn’t possibly give one single shit about it because his heart is so full, because he gets to love Steve Harrington, and—

“Loving him has been the greatest thing I’ve ever known. It’s not a privilege. It’s not a joy. It’s not a blessing,” Eddie laughs, just once: the limits of language are…offensive, almost. Because no.

It’s none of those things.

“It’s like I said, loving him?”

He waits for Robin to meet his eyes so she sees what the words can’t hold, never could, and while he’s not banking on his gaze carrying the whole of it, he’s more confident it can weave together at least some of the gaps.

“It’s what lives in me now and tells me I’m alive,” and that’s honest, that’s honest to all and every god, and all that surpasses them in the whole of being. “Maybe reminds me there are things to be alive for,” Eddie licks his lips, lets himself feel the way his heartbeat’s ramped up simply because he…he loves.

Because he loves.

“It is meaning, and it is light, and it is purpose and it’s what makes you open your eyes and feel that soft settled gratefulness that you get to do any of it, because he’s next to you,” Eddie’s words come without needing to think, or plan, for all he once scripted speeches on tabletops, or in notebooks to guide a narrative: this is his life. And more importantly: his love. His heart and his soul.

He wouldn’t want a script for any of it.

But more than wanting: he doesn’t have a single fucking need for it.

It is in his cells. He is made of all this, now. Of course it comes out of its own accord.

As blinding and as certain as it damn well should.

“He’s the reason for all of it,” Eddie finally says, voice a little shaky but it’s just because his breath’s a little shaky first, with the vastness of it all. “What would be the point, without it? Without him?”

He doesn’t need an answer, and Robin doesn’t try to give one. But he will ask, just as much without any need of a response:

“If that isn’t the same thing as a soul, then what the fuck is?”

It rings kinda quiet for a few seconds. Then minutes. Robin glances at her now melted remnants of milkshake.

Eddie looks to his own almost-full glass of wholly-unfrozen chocolate malt, and the condensation pooled underneath.

When he looks up, Robin’s eyes are on him. Shining and much less confrontational than they’d been.

“What?” Eddie asks, mostly confused but still a little suspicious. He’s been as flayed-wide as he can be, and is proud to be, and he trusts Robin implicitly but…he was being weighed and measured in order to be judged somehow.

So, he thinks it’s only smart to be at least a little bit cautious.

“Just glad,” she says, and smiles honest, no agenda left now. “You’re one of my favorite people,” and Eddie knew that in theory, at least by implication—still feels very nice to hear it.

“But you’re not my Platonic Soulmate.”

Eddie knew that, too. More than in theory. He respects the fuck out of it.

He appreciates that people beyond Eddie love Steve as fierce as this. Just as he deserves.

“It would have sucked to have had to take you out if you didn’t deserve him.”

Eddie snorts, because he knows she fucking means it. He’s almost honored that she thinks the idea of having to gut him in Steve’s defense would have been paired with any level of remorse.

“Mind you,” Robin goes a little serious again, but not…not like before.

“I don’t know if anyone deserves him,” and she says that more like I don’t think anyone could. Eddie doesn’t disagree.

But he thinks that’s the end of it, and decides he’s not going to let good ice cream go to waste just because it’s more an…extra cold Yoo-hoo slushie.

And how could he even consider letting that go to waste? Who would he even be if he did that, he wouldn’t even recognize himself—

“But you.”

Eddie looks up to meet her gaze with his lips still on the straw, mouth full of creamy chocolate. It’s not his most dignified look.

And she’s…she’s still kind of assessing, but…more like she’s made up her mind, by now. Finished her mission, fulfilled her agenda. Has the weight of him.

Possibly approves, even.

“You’re close enough.”

And goddamn, that is some glowing praise from Robin Buckley.

Especially when it comes to her Platonic Soulmate.

And yeah, maybe Eddie does drink the rest of his Yoo-hoo slushie with a little bit of pride for it.

He knows it tastes sweeter to the last obnoxious half-air-filled sip, either way.

1: Gareth // 2: Mrs. Harrington // 3: Wayne // 4: Chrissy // 5: Robin // +1: Steve // +2: ???

🍦💚 📼

✨also on ao3

💫for @penny00dreadful—happiest of happy birthdays, my lovely 🖤

✨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

divider credit here, and oddly: me, too 🖤

[wtftaylr]

i really really really really really missed drawing them omg

[jicklet]

Megamind + Roxanne in Megamind Rules! 🩵

[cybershock24601]

Seeing as I quicksave and try out pretty much every dialogue option in cyberpunk, one thing I find really interesting when talking to Johnny is the dialogue options that get him to open up, or at least give a better insight into what's going on in that fucked up head of his. In the beginning of the game, pushing back and picking more aggressive options tends to have Johnny talking more and explaining himself because he and V are still trying to find an understanding and a sense of equilibrium, but as the game goes on, and especially in Phantom Liberty, taking the more open and questioning dialogue options has Johnny being more honest. By that point he's let his walls down some and become less guarded and more genuine in his interactions with V and it's nice to see the gruff sort of concern and care he has for V when they're willing to meet him where he's at rather than brushing him off.

[andy-clutterbuck]

requested by Anonymous

[shrimpyjackal]

Yes I`ve finally desided to watch A new wish and I`m now one of his fans

[ashtreegt]

pixie loreee. these guys are weird we should study them or something (they sense this thought and imediately knock a tree onto me)

(shorn, if they live long enough, become known by outgroups as "borrowers")

[hitlikehammers]

AVOIDANCE: the only real solution to all of Eddie’s your falling-in-love problems!

(0 out of 10 participants in this approach have proven its INeffectiveness; talk to your ✨love interest✨today to avoid this heartbreaking waste of your energy!)

It’s not like they were bosom buddies for years and years. A week at the outset, a couple months since, and now they’re all back in their own homes living their own lives and Eddie can avoid the way he’s most definitely, one-hundred-percent certainly in love with Steve Harrington. Very effectively.  By simply avoiding Steve Harrington. 

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-s4, eddie munson and his newfound obsession/unprecedebtedly-close-to-love feelings for steve harrington, answer: avoid steve harrington like the plague, excellent and emotionally-mature ways of dealing with your problems! /s, primary hiccup in existing plan: forgetting steve harrington doesn’t take well to failure, (oops), miscommunication, boys so dumb, confessions, hint of angst (because eddie is a very silly boy with very silly ideas sometimes), self-confident!steve, steve harrington facing the issues head-on, feelings confessions, peak eddie dramatics, happy ending♥️

for @steddielovemonth day fifteen: “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”―Jane Austen, Emma

True fact: Eddie thought he was playing things cool. Thought he was totally copacetic, in, you know, keeping it all subtle. He can do subtle, y’know: being loud and proud, shouting on tabletops and shit, screaming at drunks—that was a choice, not a…a rule. He’s a freak, he’s an outcast, he’s a weird-ass motherfucker: he’d have had far more brushes with his actual-factual demise in this podunk town if he was literally incapable of blending in with the background, and not just kinda sickened by the concept, let alone the effort involved to appease fucking…normies.

So yeah, he’d…he’d thought he was flying under the radar. And anyway; why the fuck would Steve Harrington even notice eddies absence in his day-to-day? They were apocalypse ‘friends’. Hospital buddies at best.

They’re back in the real world now.

Eddie supposed Vecna or whatever the fuck his name is will come crawling back in the foreseeable future, but brighter minds than his are preparing for that shit. The sheepies will let him know if they need his assistance—pending what that assistance may or may not be worth dependent on how far along his PT journey he stands at that point.

But it’s not like they were glued to the hip. It’s not like they were bosom buddies for years and years. A week at the outset, a couple months since, and now they’re all back in their own homes living their own lives and Eddie can avoid the way he’s most definitely, one-hundred-percent certainly in love with Steve Harrington. Very effectively.

By simply avoiding Steve Harrington.

It’s kind of a foolproof plan, really. He starts wrapping Hellfire earlier, tells the little shitheads he’s gotta run, Wayne needs a hand with a revolving door of household projects now that they’ve got their own place with more than one bedroom. Gotta mount that hangers for that ball cap collection just right, you know, yadda yadda.

He thinks they gave up being suspicious without a week or two, now just hit him with annoyed eye rolls. God bless the scourge of self-centred teenage bitchiness playing directly into eddies hand.

What he failed to account for, however, about eleven weeks into his up-to-now flawless scheme, was…well. The leading man himself.

Showing the fuck up at Eddie’s door, which Eddie answered for once like a fool and now can’t back out of cleanly because there’s no truck in the drive—it’s clear he’s here on his own.

Motherfucker.

One thing can be said for the plan, in terms of like, general side quest observations—absence definitely made the heart grow fonder. Or at least didn’t contribute at all to the opposite. Which Eddie hadn’t been entirely sure was possible, because the speed and strength of how he fell with every fucking cell in him had honestly terrified the shit out of him on its own. But after avoiding Steve, nodding at best if he canoed paths and sneaking away when the man called out like he was gonna snake through a crowd at any of the number of the family dinners for interdimensional-trauma-survivors-anonymous that Eddie couldn’t weasel out of: it’d been clear pretty fucking quick.

The almost-indefensibly-absurd affection he’d developed for the King of Hawkins—it wasn’t just reign over the high school if the parents were so charmed, if the fucking hospital has cowed into acting and quick when they tried to hesitate in treating an accused murderer, as Eddie’d been regaled with by everyone but Steve, who shrugged his kinda crucial role in saving Eddie’s ass with a shrug and of course, man, like there was ever even a question—but his indefensibly overwhelming and absurd infatuation that spent every month expanding further to try and crack his fucking ribs, well.

It was chronic, at best. He wasn’t gonna shake it…any time soon.

Any time soon.

So: best to at least keep the catalyst at bay, stop it from causing the condition to worsen.

He’d made the mistake of thinking it couldn’t get worse already. Learn from your mistakes, and all the shit.

So what if it’s been months now and not only has the malady of being ass-over-nipple in-fucking-love persisted, but got so much fucking worse? Deeper? More, when that shit should have even been possible?

No. He just has to be persistent. Keep at the plan. Eventually, it’ll die off. It’ll whither and blow away. It’ll fucking fade—

He does, however, fail to calculate all contingencies.

Namely Steve Harrington’s incapacity to accept defeat.

He’s also too fucking scatterbrained to check the door before opening it when there’s a knock, just after Wayne’s left for his shift. When Eddie has no excuse to slam it back shut on the exceptionally exquisite face waiting when the hinges swing open.

Exquisite, but looking…pinched. Sour.

Pissed the fuck off.

And worst of all of it—because so far the list only server to underscore that unfortunate state of being fucking beautiful, on every possible level—but worst of it all, because it’s worst on its own but also because it twists, distorts all the beauty, and it’s so clearly Eddie’s fault because Steve is standing right here, and not elsewhere, after all this time.

Looking hurt, under everything else.

“I’m done with this, yeah?”

Eddie could run. He’d only make it to his room; Steve would probably be able to break down the door and get to him before he could slither through the window and run, but he’s still not 100%, right, he’s physically at a disadvantage anyway, it’s not even gonna be a question—

Steve’s got him cornered.

So he just stands. Blinks.

Doesn’t…know what Steve’s ‘done with’, but he feels his literally twist, wring like a dishrag, when he figures out the most likely answer is just:

 Eddie.

Even trying to keep the maximum distance, he either knows, and hates it, hates him, or…

He doesn’t know, and doesn’t need to. He just is over Eddie and his bullshit.

It’s in the heart-piercing distraction of either and both possibilities that Steve pushes past him into the front hall.

“What the fuck is your problem, man?”

Steve crosses his arms as the door latches closed, caging them in.

Eddie’s heart starts kicking hard, which is painful. He assumes that’s because it’s been pierced by the hurt still on Steve’s face.

“I thought we were, like, that at least we were friends?”

He says it like he also has maybe had thoughts like there’s something else they were, or could have been. That by association and context would be somewhere more than friends?

Eddie’s pieced-through heart switches to a double-thumping sort of thing that’s really just as confused as the rest of him.

Hurts like a motherfucker, too.

“Did I do something?”

Steve asks, finally sounds more defeated than any of the other things Eddie can pick up in how he holds his body, and honestly that’s what breaks Eddie’s resolve, of everything; after everything. After holding out this long and failing for the entire fucking effort, after hurting Steve, the last thing he could ever want, probably the main underlying reason he’s been running from him the whole goddamn time—to not hurt him.

He’s suck a fuck up. He’s such a fucking fuck up.

“You know how sunflowers grow?”

Steve startles a little, grows the slightest bit.

“They find the sun, and the grow toward it,” and Eddie’s not stupid enough to think the whole disaster that’s unfolding in front of him, from his own chest, his own fucking mouth—he’s aware.

He can’t do nothing, but he also doesn’t think he can sugarcoat this in a way that goes down easier; sand the rough edges to make it make better sense.

He has to wrench it raw and bloody from his ribs, caught on the jagged bone like the messy fuck he is.

“You were the sun,” Eddie finally says it out loud, and his voice is so small and wondering, he can’t hide it. “You were the sun and I woke up broken, I had to grow back so much and I did, because I had the tools,” he swallows, takes a shaky breath:

“I had the sun right next to me, to do all the growing toward. To…rebuild around.”

Eddie’s always been a weirdo, and outcast—he’s spent a lot of time in libraries; often hiding.

But he’s read a lot of random shit. And enough of it’s stuck to make some sense of this fucking mess.

Steve’s face gives nothing away. It’s usually so…so generous with its feeling, even if there are some feelings Eddie knows Steve’s careful to never let show.

But in the now, he just stares.

“Otters,”Eddie blurts out, fingers twitching, wrists shaking; “they hold hands when they sleep,” and he looks up for a second before looking away again, pulse a mullet in his throat.

“I used to hold onto your hand when I fell asleep in the hospital,” and he says it like it’s a secret, a confession, even though of all people, of course Steve already fucking knows. The part he doesn’t, though:

“I still reach, and how fucked that? Like I deserve it as a rule, like it’s mine.”

Like you’re mine.

He can’t say it. But he doesn’t have it. It rings out on its own.

“But then there are the trees that shoot up all tangled,” Eddie can’t remember what they’re called; “where the trunks split off into one another, or they’re so braided up together the share their bark, whole pieces left Bernal’s, naked but the other tree covers it, makes it strong and safe but only so long as they’re literally fused together indefinitely,” and Eddie hopes that one…that one explains itself.

He pauses, waits for any reaction.

No dice.

“Bats sleep in pitcher plants.”

That at least gets the slightest lift of the chin. Probably because it’s weird, and also…bats.

Right. So Eddie’s gonna have to spell it all out.

Which he kinda knew. The examples are fucking weird. But they’re…they’re true. They’re where he is.

“If I get too fucking close, I will destroy you,” Eddie says, because that’s the fear, right—or no.

That’s the fucking truth. Eddie always ends up with the tatters of the things he loves the most.

“I’ll take too much, I’ll take everything,” Eddie confesses, pleads in his tone to be seen, which Steve’s always been weirdly good at, and understood—the bigger gamble.

“There won’t be any stoplights, there won’t be a barrier or a boundary where I’ll know I’ve gone too far because I won’t even think of what that fucking is, what it could be to even watch for, like the barebones idea of ‘too far’, let alone what it looks like, I won’t,” and his breath runs out, so he gasps, and he thinks he sees Steve move to reach, to help, to steady.

He thinks.

It’s probably just wishful thinking.

“I won’t stop holding on just when I’m sleeping, I’ll,” Eddie licks his lips, because now…now he’sstarting to hurt, closer to what it felt like with teeth ripping his flesh than anything has felt, than any loss has threatened. He has to clear his throat, because otherwise the rest will just spill out like a sob:

“I’ll tear your bark so you bleed, and you’re exposed and you die off slow, because I was selfish, so selfish, I held to close, I fucking…” eddies voice cracks; his eyes fucking burn; “because I fucking demanded the whole of you, and damn the cost because I couldn’t process an end, why would I stop doing to even think to be logical and careful when an end to you was, is, well, fuck,” he huffs, and a tear spills out white hot down his cheek;

“It’s incomprehensible, because that would be the end of everything, that was made real fucking clear for me with the bats, both times,” and Eddie means that—he’s had time to think through the origin of his aching and it was early, it was any hint of being in the world without this person in it, too; “and the end of everything, well,” he shakes his head, some of his hair sticking in the single trail of salt on his skin:

“Tied up in you, so tight we couldn’t physically untangle?” His voice drops to a whisper, and he knows his smile has to look sad, but he means this is the deepest places his heart even holds:

“What better way to go?”

He maybes watches Steve’s throat bobbing. Maybe.

Probably not.

So Eddie just sighs. Because…none of that matters. None of that matters in the face of the core truth:

“Those pitcher plants dissolve things inside them, it’s how they eat,” he half-recites, retreating into those deep-heart places, where the feeling is most saturated, but hard to find, somewhere to hide as he whispers, cowers in himself as he flats his own flesh:

“I’ll leech from you for wanting too much just the same. I’ll fucking destroy you, Stevie,” he moans, feels his arms wrap around his chest, protective. Trembling.

“I’ll love you so hard I’ll suffocate you, I’ll tear you to pieces trying to get closer, trying to hold the heart of you closer to mine,” he doesn’t even make a conscious decision to press a palm over his flailing heart where his arm already holds, hugs himself so fucking tight. His lungs are sore. It’s tight, trying to breathe.

“It’s not an overstatement, though, the other plants, the flowers,” Eddie feels overwhelmed, suddenly, with a need to make clear that there’s only one person at fault for this, and it’s him—Steve didn’t deserve to get hurt. Eddie should have found a better way to keep him safe—from Eddie—from the very start. Because—

“You are my sun,” Eddie makes himself look up, look at Steve. “I didn’t realize how little I was growing even before spring break. I didn’t notice, how fucking thriving wasn’t even in my goddamn vocabulary, until there was you.” His breathing shudders again, followed by the rest of him:

“I turn toward you as a rule,” because here’s the thing. All these weeks and months.

Eddie’s been shrivelling. Eddie spends his nights dreaming of sunlight.

It’s inescapable.

He was going to have to find a more sustainable compromise soon, anyway. Might as well…lay it all out now.

He’s already ripped off his bark. He’s already prepared to dissolve in the acid, to burn for what it means to have left the feeling grow so big.

“I hope,” he coughs, starts slow, formal-like: “I hope you can do me the favor of just,” he has to clear his throat again; fuck, it’s hard; “politely ignoring that part. Like, even at a distance, it’s not something I can seem to stop.”

He was aiming for apologetic for that last bit, honest.

He fucking fails spectacularly, so. That’s cool.

“I swear, I won’t bother you,” he tries to convey how he’s sorry, for all of it, save for the core of the loving, because he as granted. A taste, no matter how it’s fallen to ruin; he’s selfish that way anyhow, to have seen some of the sun versus darkness alone for always.

Still:

“I won’t come near, I’ll do what I’ve been doing but better, I’ll be better, I’ll try harder, it will—“

Eddie thinks maybe he’s finally died. Of heartbreak, of whatever the Upside Down did to him. Of living without his sun for a long.

Any. All of the above.

Because the next thing he knows is pressure. Heat.

On his lips.

He barely processes responding before its town away: of course death wouldn’t be a reward. Not for him.

“Are you fucking telling me,” a voice bites out close enough to Eddie’s lips that he can feel how sharp they cut:

“That you have been avoiding me, running awayfrom me,” and Eddie knows that voice—

“Breaking my heart,” and fuck, fuck Eddie knows he knows that voice because when it’s hurting—and those words are irate and disbelieving and they’re hurt—

“Because you’re fucking scared of loving me too hard?”

And Eddie pulls back, opens his eyes: Steve.

Steve’s eyes are fucking vibrant with feeling, so many feelings. He’s…he doesn’t think he’s dead, because a lot of those feelings are ones Eddie’s not familiar with, and how would he know to place them there if he’s never known them at all?

He doesn’t know of it’s better or worse, to not be dead right now.

Because he just apparently got to feel Steve’s lips on his lips.

But then:

“Because that’s what you’re saying, right” Steve raises a brow, demands in posture as much as in tone:

“You’re in love with me.”

And then on the flip side of being alive-or-dead: he has to deal with the consequences of spelling out the answer to…that.

Which he’s apparently broken Steve’s heart over handling…the only way he could figure out. And still fucking it up.

“That sounds less than what it feels like,” Eddie whispers; it’s the only thing he can latch on to.

Steve’s eyes narrow at him, contemplate him.

“And you think me, of all people,” Steve finally asks, slow, his tone wrenchingly deliberate; “that Iwouldn’t meet someone loving that big and that much,” “and he huffs, shakes his head in searing disbelief Eddie almost wishes he could flinch from, but it’s so warm, it’s his sun:

“That that wouldn’t feel like there actually was a heaven, and I’d died and somehow made it there?”

Eddie’s breath catches, then stops entirely. He can’t seem to properly suck in another one because…

“That finding that wouldn’t feel like I’d won the lottery, like I’d figured out what it meant when people talk about a blessing, and all that shit?”

Because what…what it almost sounds like Steve is saying can’t actually be—

“That finding it, with you,” and oh, oh Steve is a lot closer than he was last Eddie processed the world around him, his chest is grazing Eddie’s chest when he seems to have no trouble breathing, just is doing it really deep and reallt fast—

“That it’d be anything less than a gift,” Steve murmurs half against Eddie’s lips; “a dream come to life?”

And Steve’s eyes flick up, and it’s when they land on Eddie’s and see him that his lungs shiver and he chokes out the only word he thinks his every molecule knows by heart:

“Steve?”

And Steve doesn’t move, neither. Loser nor farther away.

Doesn’t look away; doesn’t blink.

Just asks:

“Do you love me?”

And something in Eddie unfreezes, some string holding him up, holding him back snaps free and he just grabs Steve’s hand and presses it to his chest, like he needs to be tethered now that the string in him’s been cut, and the touch, this touch: Steve is really all he’s been wanting to keep him.

To keep him at all.

And maybe this is the one shot he gets.

But Steve, Steve said…

He presses Steve’s hand to his chest a little harder, because he’s bathed in the sun again. Their hands are linked, and they’re not asleep. He’s peeled off all the pretense, he’s as bare and vulnerable as he can possibly get. His heart’s beating into Steve palm. Eddie will happily fucking drown in this, dissolve and be…

He’s already consumed.

How is it any different, save that maybe, just maybe, beyond all odds and against everything he’s feared—

“More than I can hold in here,” Eddie scarcely finds the air to breathe; “more than I can say.”

“Then share it,” Steve says, the assuredness, the rightness in his gravity that’s always been at his core radiating forth and warming Eddie in a way he’s never known to feel before.

“Let me know it, let that feeling not be alone anymore,” and the words hold more than their syllables, by so much; “let it out to see the sun,” and then Steve’s flipping their hands so eddies the one caught agains this chest, but he’s always pulling them close enough that Steve’s knuckles are still catching the drum of Eddie’s pulse. It feels…

Eddie didn’t know what to expect, to let the feeling be felt beyond his own chest.

It’s breathtaking in a new way. It’s…

“Let it meet its match here, in how I feel,” Steve doesn’t suggest, just speaks, instructs, leads with a match to what Eddie feels, has been drowning in, save where it stole his air it’s breathing into him; where it took his light it’s reinventing the sun as Steve murmurs close, so close to his lips:

“Let it see how it was killing me all this time without you,” and Eddie whimpers for the cost of what he’s done, what he felt so sure he had to do—

“Let the feeling inside here,” and he presses his touch back to Eddie’s chest just a little bit firmer; “know how much sharing it’s like stitching my broken heart back to rights.”

Eddie’s exhales shakes so fucking hard; he can’t be this lucky. It can’t…he can’t…

But his heart’s beating so hard, so fast, so free.

So fucking alive.

“You can’t say it, big enough?” Steve pushes, his breath so goddamn warm, his lashes so thick, Eddie wants to feel them on his skin like a blessing, a sacrament:

“You can’t say it? Then show me, instead.”

And Steve looks up at him before he grabs around the back of Eddie’s neck, pulls him close enough that speaking rubs their lips together, more combative than affectionate but still undeniably intimate as Steve growls:

“Fucking months, Eddie, Jesus,” and his grip is firm, but there’s no force, Eddie could pull back, Eddie could try to run, and fail, but how could he, how could he ever—

His hand’s crushed to Steve’s chest. The same wild thrum he feels in his veins is there.

Let it meet its match.

“Make up for it,” Steve’s breath trembles on Eddie’s lips, taunts him, begs him, asks so many questions.

Eddie flips their hands one more time, presses Steve’s hand to his heartbeat with nothing less than desperation until his ribs goddamn creak, and then he leans, makes the pressure bigger—

Meets the feeling in Steve with all the feeling in him with their lips on each other like they mean it this time, ready to dissolve in it. To grow themselves to protect around the soft parts. To keep their hands entwined for always.

To come alive inside this sun.

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