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laundrybiscuits · 6 days
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Don't know if that fourth chapter I mentioned in the tags will ever get finished, but here's a fairly self-contained 560-word snippet...nsfw, obviously, but not actually all that spicy. Additional content notes: mild inappropriateness from some random sex shop employee, not dwelled upon.
“Do you ever miss dick?” Eddie winces even as she’s saying it. “Wait, fuck. I didn’t mean—just, like. Would you ever…want to get fucked with a dick, if I got one, is what I’m saying.”
“Like a threesome?” Steph’s not completely opposed, if it’s something Eddie’d be into. But these days, she can’t really think of anything Eddie could suggest that she’d say no to. 
“Uh,” says Eddie. “That’s not…what I had in mind. But we can circle back to that, maybe. I was actually talking about, you know…”
She gestures. It doesn’t look like any hand motion Steph’s ever seen before. 
It’s been snowing in fits and starts all day. Eddie and Wayne have been finding and caulking every little seam for weeks now, so Eddie’s bedroom is warm enough for Steph to be hanging out in her underwear and an old Slayer t-shirt, letting Eddie play with her hair.
“A DILDO,” Eddie says, way too loud, then turns bright red and scrubs a hand over her face.
“Oh,” says Steph. 
“I just think it’d be kinda hot,” says Eddie. “I mean, if you’re into it. You can—we don’t have to. And they’re expensive anyway, and I don’t even know where, um.”
“How expensive?” 
“What?” says Eddie. “I don’t know. Expensive.”
“We could pick something out together.” Steph isn’t rolling that deep these days, but she figures she can swing $50, maybe. That’s like…three or four shifts? Something like that. Less than a week, for sure.
———
They’re not even that expensive, as it turns out. Eddie tries to sell her on a bulging silver-and-black monstrosity, but Steph settles on a sleek magenta model which seems like a more reasonable size. 
“It doesn’t look…real,” says Eddie. “Is that—do you think you want something more, I don’t know. Fleshy?”
Steph shrugs. “I mean, you’re probably going to be looking at it more than me. Unless…”
It’s probably kind of dumb that she hasn’t thought about it before, but she’s sure thinking about it now: Eddie in her lap, bracing herself on Steph’s shoulders and panting wetly as Steph pushes the silicone in. Actually, that’s a pretty good thought, definitely worth revisiting: Eddie with all her shitty bad-girl tattoos and leather and chains, taking something bright pink because Steph’s the one giving it to her. Maybe she’d even whine for it, if Steph fucked her good enough. 
Eddie smacks her on the arm. “Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking!” she hisses. “We’re in public!”
Steph rolls her eyes. “Sure, if you figure it’s worse than whatever the guy who’s been staring at us from the blow-up doll section’s been thinking about.”
“What? Where?”
“Don’t look, oh my god. He’ll—yeah, he’s coming over. See?”
The guy wanders over and leans on a shelf, close enough so they can see a plastic nametag that reads HELLO! MY NAME IS: DAN. “Can I help you ladies with anything?”
Eddie gives him a tight smile. “Just shopping for a bachelorette party.”
“Well,” he says, flicking his nametag. “I’m Dan, at your service. Gotta say, we don’t get a lot of customers who look like you in here. Just let me know if you have any questions, or if you’re looking for a…practical demonstration.”
“We’re fine,” says Eddie. “Thanks.”
“What, your friend can’t talk for herself?”
“I can talk,” says Steph. “We’re fine. Can we just get this one, please?”
Remember my WLW canon-era Steddie series from the 2023 Spotify Wrapped ask game? I've just added some connective tissue and put it up on AO3.
feel how you fit around me (5.2k, E)
Steph keeps showing up, and Eddie keeps letting her in. As epilogues go, it could be a lot worse.
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laundrybiscuits · 12 days
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Remember my WLW canon-era Steddie series from the 2023 Spotify Wrapped ask game? I've just added some connective tissue and put it up on AO3.
feel how you fit around me (5.2k, E)
Steph keeps showing up, and Eddie keeps letting her in. As epilogues go, it could be a lot worse.
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laundrybiscuits · 1 month
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I've recently been tagged in a few WIP/"last thing you've written" type games, and…to be completely candid, I haven't been writing any kind of fic lately because I've become a little bit obsessed with analyzing the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along.
Not for any particular purpose, I just saw it at the Hudson a little while back and have a lot of feelings about it! In my tiny scraps of spare time, I've been working on an essay about Merrily and inevitability that will probably end up rotting in my google docs*, because that's how I approach writing as a hobby.
There's just so much there, holy shit. I'm focusing particularly on "Franklin Shepard, Inc." because Radcliffe's Charley brings a frenetic, desperate vulnerability to the performance that reads so, so differently from earlier productions. Throughout the show, I was consistently blown away by the heavy lifting Radcliffe, Mendez, and Groff do in shifting the core tension from "art vs commerce" (fine but basic, and difficult to keep modern) to "how people prioritize different types of relationships in their lives."
In an effort to make this slightly less wildly off-topic for this blog: this has gotten me thinking about the way that platonic relationships are treated in narratives, particularly but not exclusively in fandom.
"Found family" is and has always been a popular trope, but I do think its current incarnation trades a lot on the underlying fantasy of relationship permanence. When we recategorize friendships as familial relationships, we're making a claim—whether or not it's justified—about the indelibility of those relationships.
That's not inherently bad (or, god forbid, problematic). I think it's very very natural, especially for those who don't necessarily have a lot of experience with the way adult friendships change over time. Why wouldn't you want something as precious and unique and amazing as a good friendship to stay with you forever?
Certain people can feel like pillars of your world, and it's fucking terrifying to think about that being yanked out from under you—or even worse, to think about your lives slowly shifting like geologic plates until suddenly you realize it's been weeks, then months, then years since you last really talked.
CHARLEY: We're not that kind of close any more, the way we used to be. And a friendship's like a garden. You have to water it and tend it and care about it. And you know what? I want it back.
It's a peculiar, particular kind of grief when it happens, because even though it's a fairly common human experience, it doesn't get socially acknowledged in the same way as e.g. a romantic breakup.
So yeah, it makes a lot of sense that found family is a popular trope in all kinds of media, not just fandom.
However...at this point, I've developed a knee-jerk wariness to the phrase "found family," because I've found it often correlates with a really flat, simplistic depiction of human relationships. In extreme cases, it simply recontextualizes a relationship within the socially acknowledged/acceptable framework of a stereotypical family unit.
This does a disservice to familial and nonfamilial relationships alike. Every family is different, so why do so many found families in media look the same?
(I was monologuing about this to my very patient girlfriend, and she pointed out that this also sets up a success/failure binary condition in relationships, where permanence is the arbiter of success in both romantic and nonromantic contexts. She is of course both beautiful and correct!)
I have friends with whom I can sometimes share a glance and know exactly what they're thinking. I even have a running joke with one friend about the sheer number of times we've said the same thing in unison over the last 15 years. I still need to be intentional about building those relationships, extending empathy when we differ, and carving out time to reconnect. Truly intimate long-term relationships of any kind involve disagreements, conflicting priorities, and negotiating and renegotiating boundaries.
Being "basically the same person" or "sharing a braincell" actually sounds super fucking lonely to me, personally, and it handily elides the difficult, essential process of keeping people in your life.
FRANK: Old friends let you go your own way. CHARLEY: Help you find your own way. MARY: Let you off when you're wrong. F: If you're wrong. C: When you're wrong. M: Right or wrong, the point is, old friends shouldn't care if you're wrong. F: Should, but not for too long. C: What's too long?
That's a more complicated and much more mature narrative to tell than "friendship will save the day!" Because it's not that common and there's not a deep bank of references to draw from, it takes a lot of effort and skill to depict well, and I don't blame creators for not wanting to let it suck up all the air in the room. However, I think it's important to acknowledge that platonic relationships can also be flanderised and flattened.
In the context of fandom, which has always traded heavily in Romance genre conventions, I would really like to see more thoughtful explorations of complicated nonromantic relationships. I'm not even talking about genfic here! I've actually been thinking about Stobin specifically because that relationship (rightly & understandably) tends to show up in any Steve-centric fic, including the vast ocean of Steddie fics, so it makes the issue slightly more visible than I've seen in other fandoms.
I'm not saying I want to see them fight, or not be friends, or not love each other fiercely and near-obsessively in the way that lonely teenagers can. I'm just saying I want them to be distinct individuals who view the world in very different ways, and choose each other anyway. They already have a complicated past; I know from personal experience that it's possible as a lesbian to be best friends with a guy who once made a little speech about how into you he was, but that little layer of history never quite goes away.
I don't want frictionless relationships in my life. I want people who will challenge me and whom I can challenge, in the context of love and trust. I want people in my life whom I have to work to understand, because my life is richer when I do. And sometimes, I want narratives that will reflect the grief of friendships that are no longer part of my life, despite the best efforts of everyone involved.
In Merrily, Charley sings, "Friendship's something you don't really lose—" but Radcliffe's thready, pleading delivery makes it all too clear: Charley already knows he's lying. The audience just needs to catch up.
*Other essays in that particular graveyard: understanding the cast of Peanuts through the lens of anomie, humor and subversive linguistic nationalism in 00s Singaporean TV, how to fix Miss Saigon. WHY am I this way.
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laundrybiscuits · 3 months
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I had zero plans to continue this but @shdwsilk came in with the extremely good takes sooo…
If you don’t know Inception this is probably incomprehensible. Soz.
“Shouldn’t you be talking to the mark?”
Steve visibly startles as Eddie slides onto the barstool next to him. Steve’s in a suit, because the mark is the most boring person alive and thinks a fancy cocktail party in a hotel is the stuff dreams are made of; Henderson was extremely specific about the number of dashing rogues Eddie was allowed to drop in for passionate speeches and/or dueling purposes.*
“Eddie?” says Steve. 
“Mm, no, Johanna Berger.” Eddie tosses his head, letting ice-blonde hair cascade over his bare shoulders, and smirks up at Steve. “I am quite charmed to meet you, darling.”
Johanna is a young widow who may or may not have had something to do with her late husband’s untimely death, so she’s wearing a plunging black dress designed to show off some real bombshell curves. He’s pretty proud of her rack, honestly; it’s harder than you’d think to make sure everything looks realistic. 
“Are you doing an accent?”
Eddie scowls. Johanna went to an international school, so her accent’s subtle to the untrained American ear, but he spent two solid hours last weekend reviewing Austrian vowels with his dialect coach. 
“Are you not doing an accent?”
“Uh, no? Because I don’t need to? The mark’s from Connecticut.” 
“Perhaps the both of you could use a little more exposure to…foreign affairs.” Johanna leans in coyly, trailing one red nail up Steve’s arm. 
Steve lets out a snort that sounds completely unrehearsed. “Does that ever actually work for you, dude?”
Johanna tilts her head, gazing up at Steve. She’s not the type to get intimidated, but she is the type to be curious. She’ll take risks if it means getting a chance to pry someone open. 
“You don’t spend much time with other forgers, do you?” she says. 
Steve shrugs. “I don’t really do the whole, uh, dreamsharing community. I mean, I guess I’ve kinda been doing this a while, but like—not seriously, you know? It’s not really my thing. Wasn’t planning on any more jobs at all, but Henderson showed up, and you know what that kid’s like.”
Steve looks so openly fond just saying Henderson’s name that Johanna has the sudden urge to shield Steve’s face from the crowd somehow. The poor fool, she thinks in despair. He has yet to learn that a tenderness like that is to be protected.
Or—maybe Johanna would be contemptuous. Maybe she’d think: what a fool. Anyone could see how to break Steve Harrington’s heart.
“Yeah,” says Eddie. “I know what Henderson’s like. Biggest pain in my ass imaginable.”
The soft look on Steve’s face shifts into a real smile as he glances over. “Tell me about it,” he says. “Hey, you sound like you again.”
“What, no I don’t,” says Eddie. 
“No, it’s good. It’s better than whats-her-name.”
Eddie looks down at himself, thoroughly-researched curves straining at the satiny bodice and a manicured hand still resting on Steve’s arm. “Maybe you just need to get to know Johanna,” he says. “She’s a hell of a dame.”
“Sure.” Steve winks. “Tell her to give me a ring sometime.”
“Oh my god, why are you hanging out with projections,” says Mike freaking Wheeler, popping up like a bad penny in a cater waiter outfit. “Steve, go talk to the mark! We’re running out of time!”
“Okay, okay, sheesh,” says Steve, pushing away from the bar.
“Jesus, Wheeler, we’re two levels down. We got plenty of time,” says Eddie, pointedly not watching Steve weaving through his crowd. 
“Wait, is—are you—Eddie?” The kid is openly gawking at Johanna. 
“Eyes up here, champ,” says Eddie. “This is Johanna Berger, and she’s here to make sure everything goes according to plan. Also, she’s here to look appropriately and publicly devastated at the tragic death of her husband, because the yacht club wives are getting gossipy.” 
“Whoa,” says Wheeler. “That…wasn’t in the briefing.”
“Keep up, yeah? You’re in the dreamshare business, the briefing never covers everything.” Eddie puts a tray of champagne flutes in Wheeler’s hands and snags one for Johanna as Wheeler fumbles to keep from dropping the rest. 
Johanna sips the champagne. It doesn’t taste like anything at all. 
“Darling,” she says. “If you learn to let dreams surprise you, I think you will have a better life, yes?” 
Across the room, Steve looks up from charming the mark. He smiles at Johanna, just a quick and completely unprofessional flash of teeth before turning his attention back to a Connecticut banker who probably wouldn’t have a hope in hell of catching Steve’s attention in the waking world.
Or maybe that’s Steve’s type. Maybe he’s got some smart, boring wife in a conservative pantsuit tucked away somewhere. Maybe she comes home every day like clockwork to a hot meal and freshly-bathed children and has absolutely no idea that her trophy husband inhabits dreamscapes in his spare time. 
No, he is better than that, thinks Johanna. In my soul I know that he deserves better. I would take him away from such a woman in an instant.
Which is just—
Okay, so Steve Harrington might be a slightly bigger problem than Eddie’d thought.
*“Zero, Eddie! Zero rogues, zero secret Cinderellas, whatever that means, zero drama. Just assume the answer is always going to be zero with this guy!”
“Then what’s the goddamn point, Henderson?”
“Uh, maybe the nice fat paycheck coming our way?”
At this point, Eddie can either admit that he isn’t actually in it for the money (gross, not an option) or subside into a sulky silence. So: zero dashing rogues. It’s fine. He’s not bitter at all.
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laundrybiscuits · 3 months
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Found myself reading some old Inception fic and felt the urge to poke at an AU idea—I know ST fandom skews a little young, so I genuinely don’t know how many people will even get this. If there are Inception primers out there, I haven’t bothered to find them, so…you’re on your own, kids. 
“Absolutely not. I do my own forges.” Eddie sweeps the file off the table and directly into the trashcan; admittedly, it’s not the most mature thing he’s ever done, but Henderson’s getting on his last goddamned nerve. 
The little twerp has the fucking audacity to roll his eyes and groan, like Eddie’s the one being unreasonable. “I know this guy, don’t be a dick. He can do it. Don’t you wanna focus on your super special architect stuff?”
“What you and every other dumbass dilettante drowser don’t seem to grasp is that my architecture is alive, and I breathe life into it via my meticulously crafted characters. I create richly textured worlds, Henderson, and I populate them myself. That’s why I’m the best in the fucking business: because I understand that the people and the setting are one and the same, and I can handle both.”
“Eddie.” Henderson crouches to grab the file out of the trash, and smacks it back down on the table. “I’m running this team, and I’m saying I don’t want anything like what happened in Munich to ever happen again. Okay?”
“Low blow, kid,” snaps Eddie. “Munich wasn’t on me.” 
“I know, jeez. I just…” Henderson takes a second to tap the loose sheets in the file back into place, then stands there with his lips pressed together like he’s keeping something in. After a moment, he just says, “This isn’t going to be Munich. Because Steve’s going to be here.”
———
It’s not Munich. It’s not Munich at all. It is the furthest fucking thing from Munich possible. 
Eddie’s never had a job go that smoothly—and it’s not down to Henderson’s obsessive prep, because it should’ve been a slippery one. The kind of job that twisted partway through into something frustratingly unexpected, forcing them to improvise and take whatever half-win they could squeeze out of the mark’s subconscious while dodging completely unexpected security. 
Instead, it’s so incredibly not-Munich that the client gives them a fucking bonus, and when was the last time that happened? The bonus is generous enough that Eddie’s share can cover a whole new safehouse in Melbourne, which should have been great news, something to celebrate, except for the absolutely unholy amount of smugness now radiating from Henderson.
Eddie avoids the I-told-you-so conversation as long as he can, but he can’t run forever.
“I told you so,” says Henderson, flopping unceremoniously into the dark wooden chair next to Eddie.
“This is a library, dude. Keep your fuckin’ voice down,” says Eddie, without much hope. He’d heard Henderson was supposed to be meeting up with Sinclair in Lima this week; so much for that intel.
Henderson waves a dismissive hand, gesturing vaguely at the domed skylight high overhead. “It’s not like a library library. It’s basically a museum.”
“The goddamn State Library of Victoria is absolutely one hundred percent a library library, genius. See all the books? But also, do you think people go around yelling in museums?”
“Maybe they should! What we should be focusing on now, though, is that I was right about Steve, and I think it’s important for our working relationship that you acknowledge I was right.”
“I don’t have to acknowledge shit,” says Eddie, slumping down and ignoring the glares they’re starting to get from everyone in the atrium. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an egomaniac, kid? I don’t even get why you’re so hot on the guy, anyway. He’s like—the least imaginative forger I’ve ever met.”
It comes out a little harsher than he’d meant it. It’s just that forgers, as a people, tend to be easily swept into flights of fancy.
Eddie’s always sort of thought it was a requirement of the profession: when he’s inhabiting a character, part of his mind is always working to generate the little details that make them feel like a whole person. Their secret fears and even more secret hopes. How they deal with boredom or anger, what their gut reactions are. The small gaps between how they see themselves and how others see them. That’s where Eddie thrives, and he thinks that if he were less hooked on the magic of spinning up entire worlds for marks to wander through, he might forge full-time, just for the thrill of riding that uncertainty. It’s how he was taught, but clearly, Steve learned something different.
What Steve does isn’t really classical forging—not in the way Eddie thinks about it, usually. Steve just…walks into a situation, says some stuff, maybe gives the mark a smile all warm and private like a whispered secret. And then the mark folds. It’s maddening how easy Steve makes it look. Oh, he’ll pull on the right costumes and tweak his physicality a little, but it’s always still just Steve underneath. 
Maybe that’s the trick. Eddie’s forges work because he crafts lavishly detailed lies; Steve’s forges work because there’s some kind of real, solid honesty at the core. 
“I’m going to ignore the hurtful thing you just said because I know you hate to admit it when I’m right and you’re wrong,” Henderson informs him. “You really gotta work on that. More importantly, I’ve got a lead on a new job, and Steve already said yes.”
It’s not like Eddie needs the money. Henderson’s a nightmare to work with. And there’s the, y’know. The Steve Harrington of it all. Eddie has a million reasons to say no.
“Yeah, whatever,” he says instead. “When do we start?”
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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2023 Spotify Wrapped Roundup
And that concludes this season of Wrapped ficlets! Thanks for playing along, everyone. It’s been a blast.
Just because there have been a fair few of them—here’s a listing of all of my 2023 Spotify Wrapped ficlets. They’re almost all about 750-1000 words (#44 is ~2k whoops), and they’re all Steddie.
You can theoretically read #13 -> #45 -> #44 as a series of snapshots in the same universe, but you don’t have to.
#07 flicker start (Hayley Kiyoko): Eddie recovers over the summer.
#13 Not Strong Enough (boygenius): WLW!Eddie pines/thirsts very unsubtly. 
#16 Posing in Bondage (Japanese Breakfast): Steve experiments with rope in lieu of having any kind of conversation about feelings.
#33 Sail On, Boys (Operation Mincemeat OST): Steve takes to the sea in an ambiguously historic Age of Sail AU. Are they pirates? Privateers? WHO CAN SAY.
#36 Red Wine Supernova (Chappelle Roan): WLW vampire!Eddie bites off a little more than she can chew.
#44 Paid in Pleasure (Janelle Monáe): shameless WLW PWP. Cannot stress enough how little plot there is. 
#45 Temptation (Raveena): Steph Harrington mulls some stuff over.
#50 Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris (Hayley Williams): Eddie outgrows some jealousy.
(yes, the Spotify algorithm does exclusively serve me things like “queercore” and “transcend” and “soundtrack your situationship.” why do you ask.)
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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45 for ask game? 👀
Content note: mention of period-typical homophobia 
Can be read as taking place between this one and this (NSFW) one if you want, but I think it stands alone okay.
I know we’re supposed to be just friends / Miss Temptation I don’t think you know / you keep me waitin’ / know you like to take it slow / Miss Temptation you never let it show 
Eddie always hammers away at the back door like she’s trying to break it down. When Steph finally gets to the doorway, Eddie’s hopping up and down with her hands jammed in her armpits.
“Jesus, Harrington. Took you long enough,” she says, pushing past Steph to the living room. “I was freezing my tits off out there. Please tell me that fireplace works.”
Steph rolls her eyes a little, because it’s not that cold out. It’s only just started snowing, big damp flakes melting in Eddie’s hair. 
“I don’t know,” she says. “Never tried it. There’s some wood in the crate, though.”
“Never—seriously? C’mon, let’s figure it out, I bet we can get it going.”
Steph could point out that she’s got central heating, and that Eddie will warm up if she just waits like two seconds, but instead she just grins and leaves Eddie to it while she goes to pour some drinks.
A few minutes later, she hears Eddie crow in victory. She comes back in to find Eddie with her jacket discarded and the sleeves of her flannel rolled up, jabbing a poker cautiously at a crackling flame.
“Hey,” she says, tapping the wineglass gently against Eddie’s forearm. “That was fast.”
“Ah, you know. Wayne likes to go camping.” Eddie beams up at her. “Let’s turn off the ceiling lights, it’ll be nicer.”
It is nicer. Steph settles in next to Eddie, not touching but close enough to feel the warmth of her body, and sips her wine. The firelight makes Eddie look lit up from the inside; like all that golden warmth is coming from under translucent skin still flushed from the cold. Her red flannel shirt is open at the neck. It looks like something she might’ve inherited from Wayne, oversized and worn soft as silk, crumpling at the collar. 
Steph wishes there was some music playing, but somehow it feels like getting up to put something on would be too much. It would be the kind of dumb thing she’d do to set the mood with a guy, and that’s not what Eddie’s here for, obviously. 
As far as Steph knows, Eddie’s never had a boyfriend. 
It’s not a huge surprise. She’s never exactly been popular, plus she dresses like some burnout guy, all baggy shirts and jackets and beat-up jeans. 
Of course people call her a lesbo all the time. But that’s just normal teenage stuff; even Steph gets teased like that whenever she has a bad hair day or does well in volleyball or whatever. It’s just something people say, and then you say it back to them, and it’s normal. 
Lately, Steph has been trying to remember if there’s ever been anything more to it. Rumors, that kind of thing. Anything someone might’ve seen or heard that would make it more than words.
Steph’s always known gay people exist, she’s not stupid, but before Robin she’d thought of it as a city thing. Whenever there was something in the paper, her mother always used to say that it’s a real shame that in the city, boys who don’t have their families around can run wild. She never said exactly what running wild meant, and she never said anything at all about girls, except once, when she’d paused and squeezed Steph’s shoulders, bussing her hair, and said at least we don’t have to worry about that with you, darling.
Steph doesn’t even know how it works, with girls. She can’t picture it. Maybe Eddie would tell her, if she could find the right way to ask. If Eddie even knows—and there she is back at the beginning again, nothing figured out, just going round and round. 
So she doesn’t bring it up. Doesn’t even really know why, except that this way, nobody has to worry about anything. 
Beside her, Eddie drains her wine and draws her legs up, folding her arms over her knees. It pulls her flannel over her shoulders in a smooth line, like maybe she’s not wearing anything underneath. Which would be so stupid in this weather, honestly—Steph can’t imagine going out with just a layer of worn cotton and that leather jacket Eddie loves so much between the biting cold and bare skin. 
“You’re sleeping over tonight, right?” she says. “You’ll freeze to death if I let you head back out tonight.”
“If you let me, huh?” Eddie grins. “Can’t have my death on your conscience, I guess. Sure, Harrington, we can have a sleepover. You can braid my hair and tell me all about whatever cute guy you’ve got your eye on nowadays.”
That’s about as good an opening as she’s likely to get, if she can just find the right words. 
“Or you could tell me about any cute guys you’ve got your eye on,” is what she settles on.
“Please,” Eddie snorts. “The unwashed miscreants of Hawkins should be so lucky. Like I’d ever want a boyfriend—uh, from around here, anyway.”
“You don’t…get lonely?” Steph asks. It comes out a little soft around the edges.
Eddie leans her chin on her arms. After a moment, she murmurs, “I didn’t say that.”
Steph could probably say something back, she thinks. Some kind of response. Anything. 
They sit there, watching the fire as it slowly turns the logs to ash, for a very long time.
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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detailed review of your latest fic: 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵
Genuinely thank you so much! Smut is one of those things I find really tricky to gauge—I never know if it's going to land the way I intended (especially since I don't have a beta), so feedback is extra important to me. (much love to everyone who's responded to the ficlet in question, y'all are staving off me second-guessing posting at all)
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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(steddie, if you want) spotify wrapped - 44 please!
Ding ding ding you have unlocked absolute plotless filth! About 2k of explicit fingering and some edging under the cut. It’s not really kinky, but they do play around a little with power dynamics and Steph’s a bit of a brat who likes praise.
Could theoretically take place in the same universe as this but it’s LITERALLY JUST SMUT and stands alone.
we can be growing together / find your shade baby under my tree / I lick lick lick from your nectar / taste so sweet put it all on me
“Pizza delivery for…it says Stephanie Harrington?”
Steph leans against the doorframe, crossing her arms. “Don’t think I ordered a pizza, did I?”
“Hm,” says Eddie, innocent grin spreading over her face. “Guess I’ll have to eat this four-cheese with extra olives all by myself. Real shame.”
Steph laughs and pulls Eddie inside by her beltloops. “Oh no, what a coincidence, that’s my favorite. Sure I can’t convince you to share?” She leans in, close enough to see a flush spreading over Eddie’s cheeks. “I can be very convincing.” 
Riling Eddie up like this never gets old. It feels like it should; like she can’t possibly keep going like this, thinking about Eddie all the time. Sure, she thinks about stuff like the dumb jokes Eddie tells and how nice it is to curl up together and just watch a movie, but if she’s completely honest with herself, she mostly thinks about the kind of stuff that gets her fidgety and distracted at work, shifting in her chair. 
Last week, she’d kept thinking about the way Eddie’s mouth looked when it was wet and ended up locking herself in the office bathroom at ten in the freaking morning, just so she could clear her head before Robin noticed something was up.
People don’t live like this. They can’t. So she figures it’ll stop or maybe even just calm down a little someday. It has to, right?
It’s not going to be today, though. Eddie drops the pizza box on the coffee table and slides her hands under Steph’s shirt and up her back, pressing in with callused fingertips, dragging trails of electricity along her skin that make her catch her breath against the side of Eddie’s neck. Eddie chuckles low and throaty. 
“Jesus, Harrington. Nobody been taking care of you lately, huh?”
“Tell me about it,” Steph groans. “You’ve been on that stupid band trip for like a whole month. Next time just throw me in the trunk so you can fuck me at the rest stops.”
Eddie pulls away a little and takes her hands out of Steph’s shirt, which Steph is not a huge fan of, as a move. 
“You, uh,” she says. “Harrington, do you…”
“What,” snaps Steph. “Worried that having a girlfriend hanging around is gonna cockblock you with the groupies?”
“No groupies,” says Eddie hoarsely, kissing the corner of Steph’s mouth. Despite how keyed up she is, Steph feels herself starting to melt at how fucking sweet Eddie is all the time. 
“No groupies,” Eddie repeats more firmly, sliding a hand into Steph’s hair and settling the other on her waist. “Just you, okay? I mean—it’s been more’n a month for me too. Just—just you, Steph. Sweetheart. Baby.”
“Okay, so why aren’t you touching me already,” Steph says. 
Eddie’s hand tightens in her hair and gives her a reproving shake. “Be good,” she says, but she’s still smiling.
“Mm-hmm,” says Steph, not really listening. “C’mon, don’t you wanna feel how wet I am?” 
“Yeah,” Eddie sighs. “Yeah, I really do. Okay, bend over the side of the couch and let me get my fingers into you, you absolute demon.” 
The first brush of Eddie’s fingers, just a long trailing stroke along the underside of her thigh, is enough to make Steph bite into a sofa cushion to stifle an embarrassing moan. She struggles to spread her legs some more, but her jeans are only pulled down to her knees, so she can’t do a whole lot.
“God,” says Eddie quietly, sliding her hand up to grip Steph’s inner thigh, sweeping her thumbnail lightly back and forth. “Every fuckin’ time, Steph, I swear.” She pushes up Steph’s shirt with the hand not currently occupied and runs the flat of her tongue up Steph’s spine. 
Steph feels a yank on her bra as Eddie growls playfully; she sounds like she’s got the strap in her teeth, and Steph can’t help laughing a little breathlessly. 
“Take it off like a normal person, come on,” she says.
“It should be illegal for you to wear a bra,” says Eddie, struggling to undo the clasp one-handed. 
“I think it’d get—a little uncomfortable,” pants Steph as Eddie makes a victorious noise and reaches under her to palm her breast greedily. 
“Not for me,” says Eddie. “In fact, I think it’d be very comfortable for me if you walked around naked all the time.”
“Don’t know if I believe that, ‘cause it’s not like you’re actually doing anything back there, are you?” says Steph, pushing back into Eddie’s hand as much as she can manage. 
“Do you ever stop being such a bitch,” Eddie says, and kisses Steph behind her ear as she finally dips a little deeper, circling Steph’s clit with two fingers and making her whine as her hips buck. She tries to clamp her legs shut and keep Eddie’s hand right there, but Eddie slides her fingers back to stroke into her, deep and purposeful, pressing down with her knuckles in a delicious pressure that makes Steph want to cry.
It’s an agonizing kind of pleasure, endless and borderless; pretty soon she feels like she’ll shoot off in about half a second if Eddie so much as breathes on her clit, but the thing is Eddie knows that too.
“Eddie,” she groans. “You know I can’t—like that—just give me—”
“Shh, shh,” says Eddie, nudging sweaty hair away from the nape of Steph’s neck and dropping another kiss there. “Let me take my time, okay? Does it feel good?”
“You know it does. Fuck you,” says Steph. Her hips keep twitching all on their own, fucking back onto Eddie’s hand desperately. 
“Maybe if you behave,” Eddie croons, groping her tenderly. “You want that, baby? Tell you what: if you really want, I’ll get you off right now, but I’m gonna rub one out afterwards and you don’t get to touch.”
“Not that,” says Steph. She feels half out of her mind; Eddie’s still moving inside her, unhurried but relentless, and the boiling need she feels is reaching a desperate pitch. But the idea of not even getting to touch Eddie, of not getting to feel her pulsing tight around Steph’s fingers or tongue or maybe against her thigh, or maybe even all three if Steph’s really lucky—it’s intolerable. 
“Okay,” Eddie murmurs into her ear. “Well, the other option is: you let me play with you for as long as I want, then we jump in the shower and I ride your pretty face.”
“That. That. But, uh—no shower. Just, ah. Climb on.”
Eddie muffles a laugh in Steph’s shoulder. “Steph, that’s real sweet, but I haven’t even been home yet—swung by the pizza place and came right here. There’s kind of…a sweaty-hours-on-the-road situation in my pants.”
“Ye-ah,” sighs Steph rapturously. “Fuck. Please?”
“Oh my god,” says Eddie. “God, I—like you so much. So fucking much. You’re so fucking weird. I like you so much.” 
“I like you too, can you please start moving again,” says Steph, squeezing down a little to make her point; it feels so good that she does it once more, dropping her head between her elbows to muffle a groan in the cushion she’s been drooling into. 
Eddie nips at her ear. “You are not as cute as you think you are, Harrington,” she says, but she slips another finger in and starts stroking again in little rocking movements that send shudders rolling all the way up and down Steph’s body. 
“Please, c’mon, more,” Steph pants.
“Okay, yeah, you’re pretty fucking cute,” says Eddie. “Flip over and take off your clothes for me.”
Steph probably looks kind of dumb with how fast she scrambles to strip, kicking her jeans and panties off haphazardly and tossing her shirt and bra somewhere behind her. She can’t be bothered to glance around and see where they landed, not when Eddie’s looking at her with those huge, hungry eyes. Eddie’s still fully dressed in her handmade band shirt with the sleeves cut off, her stupid ripped jeans and her ridiculous belt. She’s even still wearing her scuffed black boots, for fuck’s sake, and Steph’s completely bare. 
She bites her lip and lets her knees fall open. Even though Eddie’s literally had three fingers inside her just moments ago, Steph gets the distinct pleasure of watching Eddie swallow hard, eyes dropping between her legs where Steph knows she’s flushed and dripping. 
“Yeah,” says Eddie thickly. “You’re pretty fucking cute. C’mere.”
Eddie grabs Steph’s ankles and tugs her flat on her back, crawling up her body to slot their mouths together. Steph sighs happily around Eddie’s tongue and rolls her hips, rubbing up into the exquisite friction of Eddie’s jeans. Eddie’s hip is right there and the rough denim is almost painful but she needs it, she wants to feel every ridge grinding over her, she wants to leave stains all over Eddie—
“Nope, you’re not getting off that easy,” breathes Eddie, pulling back, and Steph might actually burst into tears.
“I hate you,” she moans. “You fucking suck, god.”
“I know, baby,” says Eddie, shifting down and rubbing her face against Steph’s breast for a moment. “Your tits feel so good.” She catches the nipple in her teeth and pulls gently, grinning up at Steph’s frustrated scowl. 
Eddie reaches down to hook her fingers back into Steph’s cunt, and the angle makes Steph throw her head back, spine arching completely off the couch and a high, gasping whine escaping from her throat. She doesn’t even notice that her eyes have squeezed shut until she feels hot tears slipping down the side of her face.
“Oh, sweetheart,” says Eddie. “Look at you. So fucking pretty, taking it so well. I’ve got you, okay? Just a little more. You’re doing so well, I want you to take a little more for me. I know you can do it.”
Eddie keeps talking in a steady stream of praise, about how Steph looks and how Steph feels, and Steph wants to hang onto every word but it’s all blending into an endless swirl—Eddie’s voice and hands knit together in one continuous wave of sensation. It gets impossible for Steph to tell a word from a touch, and eventually she just lets it wash over her. She lets her body move without her input, rocking into Eddie in a ceaseless arrhythmic animal way, blindly taking whatever pleasure Eddie wants to give her. She’s making noises, she can feel them slipping out, but she can’t focus long enough to figure out what they are. 
“There you go,” says Eddie quietly. “Good girl. Cum for me now, baby.”
Eddie bends down to slide her tongue around her own fingers and up to Steph’s clit, laving the flat of her tongue over it and sucking hard just the way she knows Steph likes, and all of the urgency Steph’s managed to let go of suddenly slams back into her. She sinks her hands into Eddie’s hair and pushes down shamelessly, wants to shove her whole pussy into Eddie’s mouth and fuck against her tongue. She writhes, pulled taut as she feels the orgasm draw up through her entire body.
She thinks she screams when she cums, but it’s all kind of a blur: it feels infinite. It feels like the force of the spasms exploding through her core has shattered her into a thousand sparkling pieces. It feels like the only real thing in the world is Eddie between her shaking thighs, stroking her through it.
When she tunes back in, her face is damp and Eddie’s spooning her on the couch. 
“Hey,” Steph says. Her voice is a little wrecked. 
“Hey,” Eddie says back, squeezing her. “How’re you feeling?”
“Shut the hell up, you know how I’m feeling,” says Steph, turning in her arms to kiss her properly. “Now c’mon, get those pants off so you can sit on my face.”
“You don’t have to—” Eddie starts, but Steph cuts her off with another kiss. It’s pretty effective. 
“Come on,” she murmurs into Eddie’s mouth. “I was good, right? So I deserve my treat, right?”
“Jesus fucking christ,” moans Eddie, tipping her forehead to knock against Steph’s. “Okay, yeah, you’ve paid your dues. Stephanie freaking Harrington, you are gonna ruin me for anyone else, you know that?” 
“Good,” says Steph, satisfied. 
43 notes · View notes
laundrybiscuits · 4 months
Note
7
let me out my head, let my mind run free / let me just pretend that I feel like me / need a flicker start ‘cause I’m ready / anything to spark a new beginning
That murky summer was the longest of Eddie’s life. It had started in rapid-fire panic and death like a blockbuster horror flick, and tapered off to a dull ache that seemed to stretch over his body and soul like a shaky meniscus. 
He moved slow, that summer. He’d never thought too much about his body except as something that had inconvenient wants and needs sometimes; it cleaned out the fridge and cupboards faster than Wayne could fill them, it kept shifting and fidgeting when he knew damn well that he had to sit still, it had strange hungers that he swallowed down again and again. 
In the spring, he’d opened his eyes to a pea-soup fog of pain, and for a little while it had felt like he didn’t have a body at all, just a useless collection of twitching flesh pieces strung together with chicken wire. 
It got better. The docs threw around words like “miracle,” but it didn’t feel much like one. Mostly it just felt like getting back to his old body, but with all the dials turned down. Slower, especially at first, and stiffer, and weaker. Everything took twice as long to do, and consequently the summer became longer and longer. It might’ve had the same number of minutes in it that all of Eddie’s summers always had, but every one of those minutes was soaked through with a grey kind of languor. 
Dustin didn’t really get it, but he kept coming around anyway. With him came Steve Harrington.
Steve didn’t talk to Eddie a lot. Not that summer. Not at first. He was just sort of there, flipping through a magazine in the corner of Eddie’s hospital room like a blurry apparition, then shepherding in Dustin and sometimes Mike and Lucas (and even Erica, once or twice) while Eddie held exhausted court from a recliner, handing them off like a pack of puppies for Eddie to watch for a couple hours.
Eventually, Eddie roused himself enough to ask: “Where do you even go while they’re here, man?”
“Just around, I don’t know,” said Steve. “I drive around. It’s nice out.”
“That’s really dumb. Just stay here,” Eddie told him. So after that, Steve stayed. 
It was easier when Steve could say hey dickheads, Eddie’s tired, let’s go. And then ten or fifteen or twenty minutes later it’d be quiet again, and most of the time Eddie wouldn’t even bother  moving, he’d just curl up and fall asleep on the recliner. 
He was just so worn-out all the time. There didn’t seem to be any such thing as rest for him. Even when he wasn’t actually sleepy, getting through the day felt like slogging through calf-deep sand. 
The first time Steve showed up by himself, Eddie wasn’t sure what to make of it. 
“I thought Henderson left for camp this week,” he said. Steve had a key by that point, to save Eddie having to get the door all the time, so he’d just walked in and started unloading groceries. 
“Yeah,” said Steve, like it was obvious. “That’s why he’s not here.”
Eddie didn’t ask the conspicuous follow-up question, but he thought it real hard as Steve shut the fridge. 
Maybe the bat bites had psychically linked them after all, because Steve huffed out a sigh and turned around. “I brought a couple of those movies you like—the werewolf one and the zombie one. Plus we just got Jewel of the Nile, so I figured if you wanted a change of pace…” Steve wiggled his eyebrows, and Eddie found himself laughing without really meaning to. 
“You thought I’d like Jewel of the Nile for a chance of pace?”
“No, I thought I’d like Jewel of the Nile and you’d put up with it because you’re such a good friend,” Steve said. “For a change of pace.”
So that’s how Eddie found out they were friends. 
After that, it was easier. That was about the time Eddie started being able to move around a lot better too, so it all got tangled up in his head: Steve, and movement. Freedom, and Steve. 
It was a lot to put on Steve’s shoulders, so mostly Eddie tried not to. But Steve kept coming around by himself sometimes even after Dustin got back from camp, and the back half of the summer passed a little smoother and a little sweeter like that. 
The kids started preparing to go back to school, and Eddie didn’t. Steve very blatantly tried not to ask about it until one evening, sitting on the porch, he finally said: “School.” 
He pressed his lips together like he hadn’t even meant to say that much. Eddie just shrugged.
“Got my pity diploma in the mail, dude.”
“What? When?”
“Like, uh. A month ago? Maybe two?”
“Shit, man. You shoulda told me, I’d have—we’d have—the kids’d go nuts, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“What, uh. What’re you planning? Like, what’s next?”
Eddie rolled his shoulders. “I dunno. What’s next for you?”
Steve leaned back, bracing himself on his hands and looking up at the violet sky. After a moment, he said, “Guess I don’t know either. Maybe we both need, like…a fresh start. We could, I don’t know. Go somewhere.”
“Ste-eve Harrington.” Eddie smiled up at him. “Are you asking me to run away with you? Whatever will the society papers think?”
Steve didn’t take the bait, though. He just grinned back at Eddie and said, “Maybe I am. Whatcha gonna do about it, Munson?”
Eddie hesitated, but what did he have to lose? Or rather—what did he have to gain?
He reached out, slow and careful, and settled his hand over Steve’s. It felt like a circuit connecting. Like something was clicking back together inside of Eddie at last.
Steve didn’t say anything about it, but he didn’t move, either. They just sat there for a while in the twilight, watching the light change.
DVD extra:
“I’m going to see Eddie!” Lucas hollered, halfway out the door. “I’ll be back by dinner!”
“Uh-huh, and I’m not good enough for your stupid boys’ club?” Erica shrieked, tearing around the corner and skidding to a stop so she could plant her hands on her hips and glare at Lucas.
“What?” said Lucas. 
“It’s just a little suspicious how there’s no girls allowed when you go see that long-haired freak,” she sniffed. 
“Do you…want to come with me?” Lucas said slowly. 
“Of course I don’t, dumbass! Why would I want to go?” Erica pushed past Lucas, swinging her backpack over her shoulder. “But someone’s gotta make sure you stupid boys don’t burn the place down.”
“Hey, Lucas,” called Steve, leaning out of the car window. “Erica coming with us today?”
Lucas made frantic throat-cutting motions.
“Huh?” said Steve. “She’s…not coming with us?”
Lucas groaned and jogged up to the car. “She’s coming, just don’t talk about it,” he hissed. 
He thought for a second about trying to slide over the hood of the car like cool guys in the movies, but if he messed it up, Erica would never let him live it down. She’d be telling the story at his wedding and his funeral. So he just walked around to the passenger side like a normal person and got in.
“Seatbelts,” said Steve.
“I remember you being less of a nerd,” said Erica. “Now move it, the king of the nerds is waiting.”
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
Note
Spotify wrapped #13 (my lucky number😋)
Unfortunately sparklyslug got there first, so I pulled up a random number generator and it served up #36! Hope that’s okay.
baby why don’t you come over / red wine supernova / falling into me / I don’t care that you’re a stoner / red wine supernova / fall right into me
The first time Stevie meets her is on Halloween, which doesn’t seem strange at the time. Stevie’s wearing her mom’s old go-go boots from the sixties and she’s teased her hair up into a beehive; it’s silly, but she thinks she actually looks pretty hot in her little minidress.
Eddie agrees, apparently. She’s got some kind of tacky vampire costume on, and not even a sexy one. It doesn’t even look like she’s put that much effort into it: just a faded waistcoat that looks secondhand, a garbage-bag cape, and plastic fangs that keep slipping off. 
It should look ridiculous. It does look ridiculous. But the way Eddie keeps glancing over with hot dark eyes from across the room is…it’s not something Stevie’s really considered before, and if she had considered it, she would expect it to be just about anyone else. Someone normal, ideally. 
Anyway, she doesn’t think too hard about it when she sees Eddie leaning on the railing of the deck all by herself, a little past midnight. She slips out the screen door, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the chill, and walks over.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Stevie.”
“I know,” says Eddie. “I’m Eddie.”
“I know,” she says. She’d asked around. 
“You know, huh?” says Eddie, raising her eyebrows. “Okay, Stevie. You’re not scared to be out here in the dark with a creature of ze night?” Eddie makes a dumb face, baring her plastic fangs. 
“Terrified.” She’s had a glass or two of cab, nowhere near enough to justify the bold way she reaches up and plucks the fangs right out of Eddie’s mouth. “Or I would be, if these weren’t fake as hell. Did you get them at the dollar store?” 
“Those are fake, sure,” says Eddie. “These aren’t, though.”
Stevie’s been a little distracted glancing down at the shine of Eddie’s spit on her fingertips. When she looks back up, Eddie’s watching her carefully, lip curled back to show a set of long, curving canines. 
“That’s, um,” Stevie swallows. “That’s fake too.”
Eddie runs the tip of her tongue along the edge of her impossible teeth. “Not gonna get grabby again?”
Stevie sees herself reaching out like someone else is moving her hand, and brushes her finger down a fang. Even before she makes contact, though, she knows.
“So, pretty little Stevie Harrington,” says Eddie. Her voice is like smoke. “Why’d you come out here? Do you even know?”
“No,” says Stevie honestly. “But—I think you do.”
“Good answer,” says Eddie, and bites down.
Eddie jumps when Stevie slides onto the barstool next to her.
“Jesus, are you stalking me?” 
“No!” Stevie’s really not. Asking around about where Eddie might hang out, and then trying to be in those places at the appropriate times—that’s not stalking, that’s just. Showing an interest. Being proactive. A real go-getter move, like her softball coach used to say. 
“I just…thought you might want some dinner. Or breakfast. I don’t know if you, um…” Stevie trails off uncertainly. She’s only ever seen Eddie after dark, but Eddie doesn’t seem like the kind of person who kept normal hours even when she was alive, so she’s not sure if the whole daylight thing is true or not.
At any rate, she’s come prepared in a low-cut dress, no necklace or anything, faint wounds on full display. She’d thought about covering them up—maybe vampires like it when girls are totally innocent and, like, unpunctured? She’d run, if Eddie wanted to chase her. She’s given a lot of thought to Eddie chasing her, and even more thought to what might happen if Eddie caught her. But Stevie loves catching a glimpse of the marks in the mirror too much, and anyway concealer probably tastes bad. 
Eddie’s eyes keep flicking between the marks and Stevie’s cleavage in her push-up bra, so that all seems to have worked out okay. 
“I don’t…usually eat breakfast,” says Eddie slowly. “Not really one for, like. Pancakes.”
“I didn’t bring you pancakes,” says Stevie. 
“Is this—are you a hunter or something?” Eddie asks abruptly. “You have to tell me if you’re a hunter, it’s the law.”
Stevie wrinkles her nose. “There’s no way that’s true. But wait, vampire hunters are real too?”
“Buncha small-minded dicks who don’t even—anyway, what is this then, some kinda revenge?” 
“For what?”
“I don’t know! Despoiling your maiden form!”
“I don’t remember a lot of despoiling,” says Stevie, tugging her dress down a little just to watch Eddie’s eyes snap down and back up, lightning-fast. “But you could refresh my memory.”
“You do remember the, uh.” Eddie glances around at the dimly-lit bar; the nearest people are a couple of leather-clad women swaying together by the jukebox halfway across the room. Eddie flashes her fangs, and Stevie’s entranced by the way her normal teeth shift out of the way. 
“Uh-huh,” she says. 
“I guess I’m a little confused,” says Eddie. 
“It’s not that complicated.” Stevie reaches out to tuck her fingertips underneath the cuff of Eddie’s jacket. “I’m saying I live a couple blocks away, and you should come over. Have a drink. See how it goes.”
“Well…okay. Jesus.” Eddie tilts her head, looking at Stevie with something unreadable in her eyes. “Pretty little Stevie Harrington. Guess you figured out what you want, huh?”
“Guess I did,” says Stevie. 
“This isn’t, like—I’m not promising anything,” says Eddie, but she lets Stevie wear her jacket the whole walk back.
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
Note
Hey hey adoring battleship move incoming, so how about: 16 for that Spotify prompt? Hope life (the move? There was talk about a move I think?) Is treating you well!
can you tell I’ve been posing / this way alone for hours / waiting for your affection / waiting for you
Steve had still been feeling pretty stupid until maybe five or ten minutes ago. He’s not sure exactly what happened, but something had shifted right around the time he’d realized it was too late to get everything untied and put away before Eddie was due back. Even if he changes his mind right now, he won’t have enough time to hide the evidence. There’s no backing out of this anymore.
It’s not his usual kind of thing. None of this is. He doesn’t do any of this, normally.
But someone had donated a bag of VHS tapes to the library, and Steve got assigned to go through them, and there had been one—
It hadn’t looked that difficult, and he’d told himself he was just curious. He’s always been good with his hands, so how tough could some knots be? 
Pretty tough, as it turns out, but manageable. He works through the basic ties pretty quickly, and he’s still flexible enough to do a lot of it himself, even though the video is very clearly meant for someone to do on someone else. 
The idea is…not unappealing. As he works through securing his ankles in a messy double-column tie, it’s easy to start thinking about what it might be like to loop the rope around someone’s wrists and pull it snug. Yeah, he could see why people might like that kind of thing. It takes a lot of trust, right? There’s no way to laugh it off, when someone hands you that kind of control. It’d be exactly like saying I can take it, I want to take it. Whatever you want to give me. 
And that’s when he gets the idea.
It takes a little more preparation and a shopping trip, because he can already tell that the random stuff he’s been using to try different knots isn’t going to be comfortable enough for what he’s planning. Plus, he likes the idea of getting something that’ll look good on his skin. Something that makes people want to touch.
By this point, he’s stopped pretending that this is anything other than what it is: a hail-mary, last-ditch attempt to get Eddie Munson’s hands on him again. 
He doesn’t try for anything too advanced, just the easiest harness on the tape and a frog tie holding his legs into a kneeling position. He practices the whole thing all together a couple times and it seems to go okay. He wastes some rope early on when he fucks up a knot so bad he has to shuffle all the way to the kitchen and grab some scissors to cut it, but it’s fine, he’d bought enough silky blue rope to tie a dozen harnesses at once. It had been way too expensive for freaking rope, but it had looked so much better than the hemp that he’d handed over the cash without a second thought. 
He doesn’t try cuffs or a collar. It’s not—the cuffs feel okay, actually; the rope is soft and snug, and he can glance down any time and see how good the blue looks looped around his wrists. But he struggles to get them tied evenly when he’s one-handed, and he doesn’t want it to look sloppy. 
Eddie likes effort. It’s a weird thing to notice about a friend, even a friend you might’ve hooked up with a couple times. It’s pretty obvious, though; Steve watched him run a game for the kids once, and promptly decided never to watch again. 
Eddie throws all of himself into the game, all the time. It’s so much work. Steve’s seen the pages and pages of notes he keeps in his ragged binders, the way he commits to acting out all the different characters even when he sounds objectively dumb, how he gets so caught up in the moment that he’ll climb up on the goddamn table. Eddie never holds back.
He demands a lot from his players, too. They can fail. But even in that one game that Steve watched, it was obvious that Eddie doesn’t want them to fail; he just wants them to win while struggling against the toughest possible challenge. He wants to find their limits, and then push just a little to find their real limits. 
Nothing’s happened with Eddie since before Steve saw that stupid game, but now it’s all mixed up in his head. He keeps thinking about how Eddie had crowded close, hands hovering and light, darting in and then away again; he keeps thinking about what it would be like to hear Eddie’s voice sound the way it does when he’s telling his players off, firm and deep, as he put his hands wherever he wanted on Steve. 
So that’s what Steve’s been thinking about lately. 
And it’s why he’s here on Eddie’s bed, frog-tied and wearing a rope harness that he wishes he’d done a little fancier, because he thinks Eddie would appreciate that. Every time he’s tried a fancier harness it’s gone wrong or looked weird, though, so this will have to do. He hopes it’s enough. 
He’s not worried about it, exactly, because all of that stuff seems far away and smoothed over right now. He can remember worrying about a bunch of stuff, like whether he should be wearing clothes or not. He’d settled on just underwear because it had seemed a little too vulnerable to go without, but now that he’s all settled and feeling pretty good, he thinks that was a dumb thing to worry about.
Despite the weird way Eddie’s been avoiding him lately, Eddie had really seemed to like his dick at least twice before, so even if it’s not anything more for Eddie—even if dick is the only thing Eddie wants from Steve—he should get to have it. Eddie should get whatever he wants.
Steve shuts his eyes. He fills his lungs all the way, feeling the harness grip him a little tighter, and he exhales slowly.
He waits for the door to open.
Send me a number between 1-100 and I'll write a ficlet based on the corresponding song from my Spotify Wrapped! It will definitely be gay and may possibly be musical theater
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
Note
Spotify Wrapped #33?
lift your hearts to the horizon / leave your fears upon the shore / this one life is for the living / and we ask for nothing more
“Settled in yet, Harrington?” Steve nearly jumps as Eddie swings down from the rigging. “Not missing your feather bed?” 
Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m crying myself to sleep every sundown.”
“Poor baby. Need someone to hold you through the night, huh? We’re a little short on lusty lasses out here, but your good pal Eddie’s always available.” Eddie flutters his eyelashes in that teasing way he always has, and Steve laughs.
“Okay, Munson, I’ll be expecting you in my bunk at six bells.”
Eddie winks, smirking. “It’s a date.”
He shuffles in to lean his elbows on the rail next to Steve, squinting out at the bright morning light splayed over the waves. The salt water stretches out in a blue so deep and pretty that Steve thinks it could pass for a completely different world from the sea he saw last night. 
“Seriously,” he says. “You doing okay? I know it’s…not what you’re used to. The first storm’s always the hardest, and we caught a real nasty one. You want to call it quits after this, you’re not on a long-term thing, no one’s gonna say shit to you.”
“What?” Steve twists around. Eddie’s staring up at the cloudless sky, stray curls escaping from the frayed scrap of linen binding up the bulk of his hair. There are grey shadows under his eyes; he probably didn’t get much rest last night, either.
“I’m not gonna quit,” he says. “Didn’t even cross my mind.”
“Sure. If you change your mind in the next few weeks before we reach port, though…”
“I’m not gonna quit,” says Steve again. 
He’d stepped onto the gangway for the first time less than a fortnight ago, but it’s true that he hasn’t once thought of going back. At least not yet. 
“It’s different out here, isn’t it,” he hears himself saying. Eddie hums in agreement but doesn’t say anything else. 
“I mean,” says Steve, when the silence stretches out. “Everything’s just, like. It matters or it doesn’t. ‘S just easier.”
“Like you can breathe, right?” Eddie nods. “No distractions. Just the stuff you do to stay alive and sane and moving in the right direction. All the bullshit falls away.”
Steve does feel like he breathes different here. The wind has a taste, and it seems to reach every corner of his body when he shuts his eyes and inhales deep. 
And yeah, when he opens his eyes again and there’s nothing ahead except the endless distant edge where the sea blurs into sky, all the shit that he cared so much about even a month ago—the broken engagement, the rejection from the Academy—none of it seems all that important anymore.
There’s just the sea before him, and the sky above him, and the man leaning into the wind at his side. 
It’s well past dusk when Eddie shows up at the doorway to the cramped quarters Steve shares with a few other guys. One of those guys is Eddie, so it’s not weird for him to be there, but he lingers in the entrance, fingertips drumming a quick pattern on the rough lintel. 
Even in the low light, Steve can tell he looks a little different. He’s freshly scrubbed, hair unbound but tamer than Steve’s ever seen it before. He’s even shaved the patchy scruff that he’d been sporting earlier in the day.
Eddie looks like he’s made some kind of effort, and it’s that, more than anything else, that sends a near-painful spasm of fondness through Steve.
“Six bells was a while ago,” says Steve.
“I know,” says Eddie, too fast. “I mean. Fuck, this is so stupid, I know you were just kidding—”
“Yeah,” says Steve. He’s not agreeing so much as he’s just saying yeah. “I could be—not kidding, though. If that’s something…”
“It’s something,” says Eddie. He moves closer, into the glow of the lantern hanging from the top bunk. 
Steve’s eyes slip down the column of Eddie’s throat to where his shirt is hanging unlaced, crudely inked lines just barely uncovered at the edge. “Jeff,” says Steve, not looking away. “I got a full bottle of port that’s all yours if you fuck off for, uh…”
“Don’t come back until first light and I’ll throw in the knife I won last winter,” says Eddie. He folds gracefully to kneel between Steve’s legs, hands sliding up his thighs. 
“Pox on both of you,” Jeff groans. “Hand me that port and I’ll go sleep on the deck. Just keep it down, will you?”
Steve looks at Eddie’s dark eyes, his smiling mouth, the capable shape of his hands. Even through the rough breeches, Eddie’s grip feels like the air before a storm.
“No promises,” says Steve, and leans down.
Send me a number between 1-100 and I'll write a ficlet based on the corresponding song from my Spotify Wrapped! It will definitely be gay and may possibly be musical theater
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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(#50 please if you're still doing the spotify meme, and if not: hi!)
And I will not become / A thorn in my own side / And I will not return / To where I once was / Well I can break through the earth / Come up soft and wild
“That flight was absolute murder,” Nancy sighs, barging through their front door without so much as a by-your-leave.
She looks good. She’s wearing something casually fashionable, the kind of thing Eddie doesn’t even know the name of; it looks expensive, but knowing Nancy, it probably isn’t. She’s just got a knack for making just about everything look classy as hell.
“Hey, Wheeler,” says Eddie. “Can I get you a drink? An alibi, maybe?”
Nancy shakes her hair out of her face and laughs, reaching out to squeeze Eddie’s waist with one arm while she tries to wrangle her suitcase with the other. Eddie hugs her back and helps her lift the suitcase over the threshold. 
“Jeez, this thing weighs a ton. How’d you get it up the stairs by yourself?” he huffs. 
“I wasn’t by myself,” says Nancy. 
“Oh, did you bring the new boyfriend? Do we get to meet this one?”
Steve appears in the doorway, hauling another massive suitcase with a plastic bag hanging from his elbow. “Not exactly,” he says. “Ran into Nancy on the way home from the store—got back just in time to see her going head-to-head with the elevator.”
“Shit,” Eddie sighs. “I thought you told her it doesn’t work, last week when she called?”
“Oh, come on,” says Nancy, flopping down on the couch with a groan. “It’s been a long flight and I forgot, sue me.”
Steve reaches out to squeeze her shoulder. “Long flight, huh? Let me fix you a drink, and Eddie can help put your bags away.”
“Oh, can I? Generous of you, Harrington,” Eddie grumbles, but he’s already pushing some junk around to make room in the hall closet. “Wheeler, I’m putting your stuff in here, so you’re not gonna be tripping over it in the living room.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” says Nancy. “And, um. For your information, the new boyfriend and I actually split up.”
“Sorry to hear that,” says Steve, coming back in with a glass in one hand and two beers dangling from the other. He passes the glass to Nancy, who smiles up at him; Eddie snags one of the beers and takes a slow sip. 
Nancy’s talking to Steve about the split, sitting up and becoming more animated as she gets into it. Her hair’s been flat-ironed down to a sleek, silky finish and she looks incongruously glamorous in their living room; Eddie can picture her just like this on some talk show couch, describing her thrilling memoirs or something like that. 
She’s always been a pretty girl, but New York’s turned her into something else. Eddie’d bet none of her fancy city friends can even smell the cornfields on her. She still looks like the Nancy Wheeler he’d known all those years ago, but she’s a version of herself that’s been polished to a bright shine. More certain of herself; happier. Strong but delicate in a way that Eddie will never be, not in a million years. 
The light of stars was in her bright eyes, Eddie thinks wryly, and goes to join them on the couch.
“I wonder if Nancy thinks we look the same,” Eddie says around a mouthful of toothpaste. 
Steve nudges him over to spit in the sink and glances up. “Like…that thing where people start to look like their dogs? Is this about me growing out my hair a little? Because I told you, it’s not gonna look anything like yours—”
“No, asshole,” says Eddie, sticking an elbow into his side to shut him up and also to reclaim the sink. “I didn’t mean the same as each other. But you should cut your hair. And wait, did you make me a dog in that analogy? Never mind. I just meant, I wonder if Nancy thinks we look like the same people we were a few years ago.”
“Are we…not the same people we were a few years ago?” Steve sighs. “No, okay, I get what you’re saying. Like how Nancy looks different now.”
“Exactly, yeah.” Eddie rinses out his mouth and leans against the counter as Steve does the same, casting a glance back out to where Nancy’s lightly snoring on the pull-out mattress in the living room. 
“I mean…she’s got a New York look, right? Maybe we have a Chicago look. We’ve been here longer than she’s been there. We’re, like, city people now.”
“Okay, first, stop telling people we live in the city, we live in a freaking suburb of Chicago and you know that. Second…it’s not the same, is it? I don’t think Nancy Wheeler would think it’s the same.”
Steve shrugs. “Sure, yeah. Sounds like she’s got a pretty exciting life out there. Except for the boyfriend. Jeez, that sounds like a mess.”
“Heartbreaker Nancy Wheeler strikes again,” says Eddie, taking aim with an imaginary sniper rifle. “Watch out, boys.”
“It’s—” Steve frowns, glancing away. “I know we haven’t—talked about stuff, or anything. But you know I don’t…you know I’m not gonna get back together with Nancy, right?”
Eddie looks at him then in the yellow light of their bathroom, and it turns out he does know, after all.
“Yeah,” he says, and takes Steve’s hand. Squeezes it once, like a promise. “Like she’d have you with that unkempt mane of yours, anyway.”
“Shut up, I’m not cutting it,” says Steve, but he doesn’t let go either.
Send me a number between 1-100 and I'll write a ficlet based on the corresponding song from my Spotify Wrapped! It will definitely be gay and may possibly be musical theater
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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It’s like playing battleship for explicit wlw jams. 13!
I don’t know why I am / the way I am / not strong enough to be your man / I tried, I can’t / stop staring at the ceiling fan and / spinning out about things that haven’t happened
Lying on the floor like this, Eddie can just see Steph out of the corner of her eye. Steph is stretched out on the couch, head tipped back over the arm, exhaling slowly into the thick August heat. Her shirt is rucked up, just a little, so Eddie can see a slice of stomach, just big enough for Eddie to set her teeth in, rising and falling. 
Why the fuck are you like this, Munson, she thinks to herself. She reaches out to snag the joint from Steph’s dangling hand and closes her eyes as she takes a drag. 
“Do you ever think, like…” Steph says.
Eddie waits peaceably as the weed sends a pleasant shiver through her brain. It’s so much easier to let shit go when she’s high; she can glance over at Steph’s prissy little shorts (which Steph once admitted to ironing, like some kind of space alien), and squirm a little, and that’s it. She doesn’t have to feel anything else about it.
Eventually, she says, “Think what?”
“What?” says Steph. 
“You said…” Eddie fishes through the soup of her memory, not in any particular hurry. “Do you ever think. Is what you said. I mean, if that’s the whole question, Harrington, I think we both know the answer.”
“Oh,” says Steph. “Yeah. Uh. It’s dumb. I was just thinking, like…if I was a guy, maybe I could’ve gotten Carver to back off, or whatever.”
Eddie snorts. “Seriously? That’s what you’re thinking about? If you were a guy, I’d definitely have stabbed you in Rick’s boathouse, so no. You couldn’t have gotten Carver to back off, because you’d be bleeding out in the worst-kept stash house in the state.”
Steph lets out an airy giggle that sounds completely involuntary, and it’s so good to make her laugh. Sure, the weed’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but still.
“I think,” says Steph after a minute. “We should have more guys in the group. For muscle, or something. I mean, I love Robin, but he’s not exactly…I’ve got a better chance of winning a fight than he does.”
Well, yeah. Eddie allows herself one and only one glance at Steph’s thighs, thick with muscle and golden from a summer bare to the sun. 
“Plus,” Steph says, snorting. “We might as well get some more eye candy around.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” says Eddie. “Eye candy, yep. Definitely…in need of that.”
Steph laughs again, even though Eddie wasn’t trying to be funny or anything, and wiggles her fingers until Eddie passes the joint back to her. 
Eddie’s not looking, she’s really not, but it doesn’t matter. Her eyes are fixed on the slow-turning ceiling fan, but she can picture the exact curve of Steph’s neck tipped back; the exact way the tip of Steph’s tongue always flicks out to lick her lips before she brings the joint to her mouth, eyes already half-lidded and hazy. She’d probably look just like that if she’d ever let Eddie hold her wrists over her head, ribcage squeezed between Eddie’s knees, tits spilling out of her soft cotton bra at the stretch and arch of her back. Eddie’s stronger than she looks but Steph could still probably throw her off easy, which means it’d be a choice to let Eddie pin her down like that. It’d mean she really really wanted it, if that ever happened, which it wouldn’t. Won’t.
“So, you and Robin,” Eddie starts, because she’s a goddamn car crash. “Sure there’s nothing there? He not enough, uh, eye candy for you?”
Steph goes quiet. It’s such a shitty thing that Eddie’s doing, because she knows—or at least she’s, like, 90% sure—and there’s no way Steph doesn’t also know, so Eddie’s just being a dick and putting Steph in a really awkward position. 
The thing is, maybe Steph doesn’t know? Or maybe she does know and feels weird about it. Or maybe she knows and doesn’t feel weird about it but would feel different if it went another way, a girl way. 
Or maybe Eddie’s tying herself up in knots and trying to read the fucking tea leaves over nothing at all. 
“No,” is all Steph says at last. “It’s not like that with me and Rob. I did…kinda have a thing for him, once.”
“Not anymore?” says Eddie.
“Not anymore. I’m—I guess I don’t know so much, nowadays, what I’m looking for. I guess I’ve been thinking lately, about stuff. Just…”
Steph trails off. The lazy blades of the ceiling fan go whop whop whop, pushing the heat around in endless circles. Eddie shuts her eyes, and tucks her arms behind her head, and doesn’t ask, and doesn’t ask, and doesn’t ask.
Send me a number between 1-100 and I'll write a ficlet based on the corresponding song from my Spotify Wrapped! It will definitely be gay and may possibly be musical theater
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laundrybiscuits · 4 months
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spotify wrapped is HERE! send me a number 1-100 and I’ll tell you the song it corresponds with on my top 100 playlist
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laundrybiscuits · 5 months
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Just for fun, here's an extended process breakdown that absolutely nobody asked for:
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I straight-up traced the main layout of the original painting, as a quick way to make sure I had all the elements in the right places. Eddie's a bit taller than the Sappho model is, so I pulled reference shots from the show to sketch his proportions onto a new layer and see what might need adjustment.
It wasn't much, honestly; mostly I had to think about the subtle pose changes. Sappho's hip is pushed out quite a bit, and I did initially try to use the same angles, but Eddie's torso is so much longer that it made him look ridiculously off-balance. As I mentioned in the tags, I actually also pulled some shots of the Braschi Antinous to help get a very classical look for the musculature and pose.
Once I had a decent sense of the figure, I blocked everything out with a big brush. 90% of this painting was done with the Gloaming brush in Procreate. I have never bothered to learn how to install new brushes and at this point I probably never will.
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For some reason I initially painted the skin WAY too saturated, as if the atmospheric light were golden e.g. firelight or sunset. You can see the palette I used on the left, by his feet.
I painted the skin all on one layer so I don't have any mid-process shots, but in general for painting stuff that's all basically one color, I use a three-tone palette (dark/mid/light). I use the intermediate blends (dark/mid, mid/light) to block out the figure in two solid tones, then render all the detail with a low-opacity brush, pulling just from the three-tone palette. If more color variation is needed within the form, I might do two palettes (warm and cool) in dark/mid/light, which adds another dimension to color selection.
I finished painting the tonal values, stepped back, and went "...well this isn't going to work." So I added one blending layer to lower the saturation and another to push it more towards red-purple than yellow, because he's standing outdoors on an overcast day where the atmospheric light is blue-grey. Blending layers as a quick fix may be "cheating" but consider: I do not care. (that's a lie, I care very much, I know it's bad for my color judgment in the long run)
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I ended up walking back the Fantasy Hair, which dialed down the drama a little bit. Sappho has a big sweeping black headscarf/veil that balances out the composition nicely, and originally I thought I could get roughly the same effect with Eddie's hair alone. It just seemed a bit much when I got right down to rendering it, though. I also very slightly smoothed down the arms because there's classical idealism and then there's CLASSICAL IDEALISM. Y'know?
You may also have noticed the general lack of jewelry. I thought about adding in his necklace and rings, but ultimately I decided to be pretty strict about only including (versions of) elements from the original painting.
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The background was fairly straightforward, as it was pretty directly copied from the original painting. I wasn't overly precious about replicating all the details, but it was helpful to have a rough guide for shadows etc. You can see the palette I used for the rocks in the above left image.
And there you have it! I don't actually have any formal art training, so studies/pastiches like this are especially helpful for me. I'm not sure exactly how long this one took, but I did finish the entirety of Sandman on Netflix while painting, so...at least that? I did a lot of squinting at the wikimedia Sappho file. I wish I'd had this idea when I was still in Manchester, because even high-res digital images obscure a lot of the details of the original painting that I'd have liked to double-check.
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A few months ago, I saw Sappho (1877) by Charles Mengin in the Manchester Art Gallery; felt like painting some translucent fabric the other day, and this was the first thing that came to mind.
From the display label: "[The] dark and brooding femme fatale, a symbol of seduction, deception and destruction[…]may reflect late Victorian male fears."
Detail below the cut, because I actually did paint this pretty big and tumblr compression is hell:
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