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urdreamgirls-dreamgirl · 8 months

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what, like it’s hard?, pt. one

“it’s just that… if i want to win a seat in congress by the time i’m thirty, i need to find someone who’s serious about my career. not some little elementary school teacher that cares more about his students than what he’s wearing on my campaign stops,” tommy tells steve, as they’re sitting in quite possibly the fanciest restaurant steve’s ever step foot in. the menu hadn’t even included any prices.

“but… i’m seriously in love with you.” steve feels like his whole world is falling apart. just last week he’d been so sure that tommy was getting ready to propose. he’d introduced steve to his family—they’d spent a week out on martha’s vineyard for a family reunion at which steve had met tommy’s great-grandmother, hands laden with rings as she’d winked when tommy had asked for a private conversation. steve had been so sure that conversation was about the family ring.

“and i love you too, baby, but look. you don’t want to have to leave your students for half the year to come on the campaign trail with me, do you?” tommy asks, not even really looking at steve. he continues to just eat his stupid dinner as if he’s not ripping steve’s heart out at this very moment.

and steve can’t help but think how silly this all is, because it’s not like tommy’s actually running for anything right now. steve doesn’t even teach yet, beyond the two days a week he does his student teaching. they’re only 22, they haven’t even graduated northwestern with their bachelors degrees! but tommy’s saying these things as if they’re all real, right now.

“and i’m off to harvard next fall. it’s not like we’ll stay together while i’m there and you’re still here, right?”

and the thing is, steve had actually thought he’d be going with tommy to boston. they’re both set to graduate in the spring, steve with his degree in education and tommy with a dual major in pre-law and political science. they hadn’t really ever talked about it, but they’d been together since the beginning of their sophomore year. so yes, steve had thought they’d still be together when tommy started at harvard law.

but now steve’s starting to feel extra stupid.

“so… what? you’re breaking up with me?” steve starts to feel his chest tightening, like he might cry. he can’t believe that two hours ago he thought he’d been getting ready for a proposal.

“don’t think of it as a breakup, stevie… think of it as a conscious uncoupling. we’re just moving in two different directions. i’ll be at harvard law next semester and you’ll be…” tommy gives him a look of slight disdain—steve has never seen tommy look at him like that. waitstaff? sure. his driver? absolutely. but it’s never been directed at steve before. “well, you’ll be teaching snot-nosed six year olds. we’re on different paths.”

and that’s what truly makes steve’s blood boil. his passion for teaching and education is one of his greatest qualities and he’d thought that had been part of the reason tommy loved him. he didn’t realize that tommy loved him in spite of that. he’s not gonna let some asshole like tommy montgomery hagan iii tell him he’s no good.

so he doesn’t respond. he just takes the linen napkin off his lap and throws it on his half-eaten steak dinner and marches out of the restaurant.

tommy doesn’t even follow him out.

~*~

“oh steve… i’m sorry,” robin says to him about an hour later while steve lays his head in her lap on their dingy couch.

“it’s not even that he broke up with me,” he explains through tears. “it’s that he basically said i was worthless. like i couldn’t do anything better than teaching. as if teaching isn’t even an admirable profession! where would he be without his teachers, huh? isn’t this all about going to stupid harvard? what does he think the professors there actually do? knit?”

“is this a bad time to tell you that i always kind of hated him?” robin says, maybe trying to get him to laugh. but it kind of surprises steve. he sits up, knocking her hands from where they’ve been carding through his hair in the process.

“you did?! no, you didn’t.” he searches robin’s face for a moment and then sighs. “why didn’t you say anything? you could’ve saved me a whole lot of wasted time.”

“babe, you were so gooey-eyed for that guy, nothing i said was gonna change that. a crowbar couldn’t have pried you away from him. but you have to know he was an asshole.” when steve stares at her blankly, she huffs. “steve, he used to offer to cover the whole tab when we went out. how often did he ever actually pay, even for his own drinks? he made poor jonathan cry the last time we were all here for game night, just because jonathan asked for clarification on the rules for pictionary.” steve is still staring at her. “he tried to stiff argyle by offering him a flight on his dad’s private jet instead of paying for his weed and we all know he doesn’t even have access to the jet. dude was cheap as fuck and not even nice about it.”

steve thinks about it. it was kind of true. tommy was a horrible tipper—steve usually laid down a couple of twenties when they went to dinner together when tommy wasn’t looking. he can remember more than a few times where the guy had sent their food back even though it had looked perfectly wonderful to steve. so… okay, maybe robin had a point.

steve tells her as much, then adds, “but he was always nice to me.”

robin snorts. “are you kidding? he’s stood you up so many times i can’t even remember all of them. remember that time he said his first impression of you was that you weren’t as hot as your pictures? who says that to the person they’re dating?”

steve groans and lays his head back down in her lap.

“okay, so maybe you have a point about that too. but i was gonna marry him, rob. what do i do now?” he knows he’s whining, but he feels just a little bit entitled to it right now.

“i don’t know, babe. get over it, i guess. welcome to the world of us singles. it sucks out here.” steve can hear the fondness in robin’s voice as she says it, but still. it does sting just a little.

they sit there in silence for a while, with robin running her hands through his hair again. it’s so soothing that he almost jumps out of his skin when she speaks again.

“hey, you know what would be super funny?” she’s laughing a little as she says it.

“what?” steve had been dozing just a little and his voice sounds muffled by fatigue.

“if you got into harvard and just showed up on the first day. imagine the look on his face.”

steve laughs at how ridiculous that sounds. like he could get into harvard. plus, he’s got teaching to think about. he doesn’t have a place yet, but he knows he’ll get one soon.

but as he sits there with robin’s hands stroking through his hair, he begins to daydream about how shocked tommy would be. about how he’d have no choice but to eat his words when steve proves himself by getting into one of the most competitive programs in the country. about how good it would feel to prove the bastard wrong.

“robin?” she hums in response. “you’re a goddamn genius.”

~*~

“dingus, are you sure you want to do this?”

the spring semester starts in three days. it’s their last semester at northwestern and there’s nothing but great big darkness on the horizon of steve’s future. he hasn’t slept in two days, busy studying, thick workbooks piled around around him at the kitchen table. he knows what he must look like, over-caffeinated with bruises under his eyes.

“i’m sure.” steve has his lsat exam in one week. “i have to take the exam this week. apps are due by march first.”

“no, steve, i don’t mean taking the test. i mean applying at all. it’s clearly more stress than it’s worth. do you even want to go to law school?” robin sounds concerned and normally steve would think it’s very sweet, but currently it does nothing but irritate him.

“i could,” he responds grumpily.

robin sighs. “i just mean… is this worth it?”

steve looks up then and sees her biting her lip, clearly worried about him. he puts his pencil down and stops the timer on his phone, giving her his full attention.

“this isn’t just about tommy.” robin gives him a skeptical look and it’s his turn to sigh. “it’s really not. maybe it started out that way, maybe it was just a stupid joke to get revenge on the asshole, but now it’s more than that. it’s proving that i can do something unexpected of me.” he swallows. “no one even believed i would get into college. i was just some stupid jock in high school who’d never amount to anything. and then i got in to northwestern and i was so shocked and happy. but i found out that my dad had actually pulled a bunch of strings. so i hadn’t gotten in on my own merits. he didn’t think i could. but now…” he runs a hand through his hair nervously. he’s never said any of this out loud before. “he’s not around now. there’s no one to help me. no safety net. if i can do this, it’ll prove something to me. something that maybe i don’t really believe yet.”

he expects robin to say something about external validation being a corrupting force and identity built on academic achievement being solely a losing game, but she doesn’t. instead, she sits down across the table from him and picks up a workbook.

“okay,” she says. “what do we have to do?”

~*~

“mail here?” steve calls out when he hears the front door close behind robin.

there’s a moment that feels like a pause. “yeah, it’s here.”

steve practically sprints from his bedroom to his living room. robin holds a single white envelope in her hand. steve all but snatches it from her.

his fingers move to rip it open, but then he hesitates. he thrusts it back towards robin. “i can’t,” he tells her. “you do it.”

her eyebrows shoot up. “you’re sure?” steve nods. he watches her rip the envelope open, bouncing on his feet. she scans the page and then she’s smiling.

steve grabs the paper from her. “oh my god?!” he yells. “oh my god!”

robin practically jumps into his arms. “179, baby! harvard law here we come.”

~*~

even after such a successful run at the lsats, there’s still the little matter of actually getting in to the school. steve’s only experience with the academic application process was with undergrad and it appears that applying for anything beyond a bachelors degree is an entirely different ball game. he’s so out of his depth that he’s forced to turn to grad school message boards for advice and tips of how to get in. it seems like everyone else is applying to a hundred different schools while steve’s only applying to one. he learns this is a terrible strategy for planning one’s future, but that doesn’t really matter to steve. for him, it’s harvard or nothing.

there are so many different parts of the application that it makes steve’s head spin. there’s the statement of purpose and the personal statement—the difference between those two requires robin’s careful and slow explanation about three separate times. then there’s the writing sample and the application and the recommendations and the transcripts and and and

but with robin’s help, steve completes each component and successfully sends his materials by the day of the deadline.

steve’s never been a patient person. no one on earth would accuse him of that, so even he can tell that he’s getting on robin’s nerves every day as he practically pounces on her when she returns from collecting the mail.

and then one day, finally, at the end of april, she comes through the front door and clutched in her hand is a big, thick white envelope emblazoned with the words ‘harvard law’ in bold, beautiful crimson red.

~*~

“last chance to back out,” robin says smiling as she swings herself up into the passengers seat of their rented u-haul.

“nah.” steve returns her smile as he slides his sunglasses from his hair onto his face. “let’s get out of this dump.”

and with that, they leave their first apartment behind, headed to the coast.

[wanted to finish this completely before posting but my benadryls kicking in and i have no self control. eventual steddie, promise! no tag list for this one, sorry!! it’s giving me anxiety on the other one lol absolutely not edited, if u see a typo no u don’t. i wrote this on my phone in a feverish frenzy. also, i originally invented someone for the role of warner but then i was like ‘IDIOT!!!!! why would u not choose tommy?????’ so if there’s a name in here that shouldn’t be, no there isn’t.]

#the not as hot as ur pictures thing is a real thing my ex said to me after we’d been together for like six months lol called me ugly 😭#legally blonde au #steddie #steddie fic #steddie legally blonde au #this will EVENTUALLY be steddie if i write more lol #robin buckley #steve harrington #platonic stobin #steddie fanfic #steddie ficlet #i’m setting it up!!!!!#eddie will be a bartender not a law guy sorry!!!! lawyer!eddie just don’t feel right to me #steddie fanfiction #steddie blurb #guess what i watched tonight #well i also watched mean girls lol #here have this half finished thing #i wanted to finish it before posting but

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formosusiniquis · 3 months

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Robin's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Your Newly Adopted Former Mean Girl

Happy @stevieweek everybody! This is Day One: Stobin with none of the bonus prompts, but keep an eye out cause i've got a few more incoming this week.

Robin Buckley & Stevie Harrington; Pre-Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 9483 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Tags/Themes: transfem!Steve Harrington; Platonic Soulmates Steve & Robin; Robin Buckley is the Stevie Harrington Defense Squad

AO3

On July 4th, 1985, Steven Joseph Harrington died in the Starcourt Mall Fire.

The story Robin Marie Buckley tells, after two weeks of hospitalization and an additional month in Indianapolis for “personal reasons,” when she returns to her senior year at Hawkins High a full week after the first day of school is one of abject heroism on the part of Steve.

It’s true, even if it isn’t the whole story. Just like it isn’t hard for her to play morose and avoidant, because that’s how she feels. She might know Dustin, but it’s too hard to spend much time with him and she doesn’t want to be the weird friendless senior who only talks to freshmen. She’ll leave that to Eddie Munson, who snatched Steve’s weird little child friends up only a few weeks into the first semester.

Nancy and Jonathan avoid her as much as she does them, she doesn’t think they know what to do with the new girl in the know. It paints a picture, well she realizes later that it paints a picture, but she doesn’t want to sit at a table and eat her peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Nancy Wheeler’s big beautiful eyes are staring at her like she’s an article that’s half an inch too long and needs to be dissected while Jonathan Byers is also there.

So she drifts through the halls of Hawkins High like a ghost, she’s Cathy on the moors. Avoiding anyone who might try to ask her too many questions about the final days of Steve Harrington and Starcourt Mall.

Until the day she spots a baby blue jeep pulled into the Henderson’s driveway, a tall brunette unloading a single suitcase from the back. She’s got her bike across the road before she can even think of a game plan. A noise that’s almost like a scream erupting from her mouth the entire time she coasts over.

“You’re here, you’re here, you’re here!” It’s an uncharacteristic bit of grace, that lets her drop her bike to the ground and use its momentum to catapult herself into the other girl’s arms. Too excited for a second to remember that she’s in a place where small town gossip exists, and a new neighbor can fuel the mill for days.

But she enjoys her hug for a second before settling into a more appropriate character. She extends a hand, ignoring the laugh it gets her, “Welcome to Hawkins, I’m Robin, occasional Dustin babysitter.”

The girl’s smile pulls lopsided at her mouth, kissed with a bit of irony and undeniably charmed. “It’s nice to meet you Robin,” her voice is soft, and a little unsure. Wavering like Becky Simpson’s tone deaf oboe playing, unsure of what pitch and timbre to land on. “I’m Stephanie Henderson, Dustin’s cousin.”

The bit crumbles immediately between Robin’s fingers.

“Stephanie? You went with Stephanie? Are you kidding? We workshopped so many names!”

“I liked my name! But it’s weird apparently to be a girl named Steve.” She distributes finger quotes randomly throughout the sentence like Robin hadn’t been the one to say she didn’t know any girls named Steve. “Stephanie is pretty!”

Robin looks her best friend dead in the eye, unsurprised that there’s not a hint of humor even underneath the drama. “Never mind that it sure would be strange for Steve Harrington to die just for girl Steve who looks like she could be his cousin to move to town.”

“Affair baby,” Stephanie presents the solution with a flick of her hand. Robin notices that her nails are still chewed short, more noticeable after they talked about what it would be like for her to grow them out and manicure them.

“Give me the whole name right now,” Robin demands, “I wanna hear how it sounds.”

Steph, cause they’re going to have to figure out nicknames immediately they just aren’t the kind of friends that can go around being Robin and Stephanie, kicks the curb with her scuffed up Nike. Her arms crossed across her middle accentuates the way her body has already started changing, Robin feels like a creep for a second for noticing her friend’s boobs before deciding that they weren’t the kind of friends with those kinds of boundaries.

“Stephanie Marie Henderson.”

“Oh my god!”

“Shut up, don’t even.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“You’re already making a big deal out of it, which it’s not.” Stevie insists.

“You stole my middle name, you’re so obsessed with me.” It’s the best thing she’s ever heard actually, that Stevie might be as into this friendship as she is. She’s always the friend that’s too much.

Stevie’s smile is small, shier than she’s used to seeing it. “Yeah well whatever Stephanie Robin sounds like a straight to VHS Winnie the Pooh movie character or some shit.”

Dustin comes scrambling out of the house before Robin can make another joke. “You were supposed to call before you left! Ma isn’t finished setting up your room, and Tews is stuck under your bed.”

They share a look, and Robin thrills a little that she has a friend that she can share looks with. “Henderson,” Stevie shouts, sounding a little more like she did this summer. “Are you really going to make me carry my own bags in? I'm a fucking lady, dickhead.”

“Sure don't fucking talk like one,” Dustin hollers back from the door, already trudging out of the house.

“Gonna have to work on your feminism,” Robin says. wondering what kind of weird shit a person would have to sort through when they realized they were transsexual. “Just because you're on estrogen doesn't mean your arms are atrophied.”

The butter-wouldn't-melt smile is still the same, even though her face looks softer. She hands off her suitcase, patting Dustin on the head as he visibly stumbles under the weight. “Don't drag it on the sidewalk, it's new,” she directs.

He can't flip them off when it takes both hands to lift the luggage in his hand, “How are you more of an asshole, oh my god.”

“Is that anyway to talk to your cousin, Dustbunny?”

Dustin doesn't answer directly, but he's muttering under his breath the whole way to the house.

“My ribs still hurt some when I'm doing heavy lifting,” Stevie says when he's out of earshot. “Better to be a high maintenance girl all of a sudden than someone he doesn't think he can count on.”

“Don't love the way you used girl in that sentence, Dingus.” Robin shoves at her shoulder, “Let's go look at your room, we can plan how you want to decorate.”

“I'm not saying I'm upset we got the job, Rob, just that it's weird the way Keith was acting. He always hated me, you know that. Before all this,” she gestures down her striped top, well Robin supposes she’s actually gesturing down at the way it hugs her figure, “he hated me. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire.”

“That seems a little dramatic, but welcome to your first workplace sexism.” Robin gives Stevie a comforting pat. Hopeful that it communicates a ‘welcome to the bad parts of everyone knowing you're a girl’ and not how she’d been prepared to work some of that sexism to their advantage. But apparently Keith was charmed by Stevie’s list of favorite films, he’d even laughed when she said her favorite Star Wars movie was the one with the teddy bears. When they’d gone to pick out movies last week she’d heard him lecture a guy for five minutes on how it was Episode VI not ‘the third one.’

Stevie flips her hair, sending Robin a playful glare, “I’ve experienced sexism, thank you, have you already forgotten what I used to look like.”

“I’m sure he’ll go back to hating you once he realizes you working here is going to mean this is one more place that Henderson and the brats are always hanging around.” She went with Stevie to the arcade once and she almost understood why Keith always hid in the back when they walked in.

“Probably, but at least then I can stop being nice to him. He’s such a-” Robin can hear the way Stevie swallows the rest of the sentence. A frustrated, red blush flooding her cheeks as she bites down on her bottom lip. It’s confusing, the small shake of her head and how upset she suddenly seems to be with herself. “Sorry, sorry, never mind.”

Maybe it’s stupid, but for some reason that’s when Robin realizes that Stevie was about to say something mean. That Stevie stopped herself but she is, Robin supposes, frustrated that the instinct is still there. And it’s not like Robin doesn’t remember that they’ve talked about this before. Stevie with that eyepatch on from where they reattached her retina and Robin laying in the hospital bed next to her still under doctor’s supervision. Neither one of them were high anymore, it had been almost sixteen hours since Everything, they were only in the hospital at all because Robin’s mom had found them both passed out in her bed and panicked. When Mrs. Henderson had seen them both in Hawkins General and did what Stevie said was panicking and had them shipped to the city, her car speeding closely behind.

The only thing they could possibly be high on was the sudden crushing awareness of their own mortality, when Stevie’s one good eye locked with hers and she said, “I don’t want the first thing people think of when they remember me to be how I was a douche or an asshole. Or a bitch, I guess, if they actually let me change like they said they would.

“All the girls I know,” she paused and seemed to consider that, “all the girls that I still like, are good and kind and badass.”

“Including me?” Robin had teased, but she had remembered the way she had given Stevie such a hard time from the second they started working together until the moment they as the ‘adults’ realized they were going to have to protect Dustin and Erica from something that might kill them all.

“Especially you.”

So yeah, of course, when she catches herself about to verbally eviscerate Keith behind his back two weeks after being back in town she shuts down. But Robin isn’t about to let that happen. Stevie is good and kind and definitely a badass, if Keith were in trouble she would absolutely risk her life to save him -- as long as saving him didn’t keep her from saving one of the kids.

Stevie was a good person who had some mean girl tendencies, Robin wasn’t going to make her feel bad about that. As long as she was using her powers for good, or like Claire in the Breakfast Club she was kind of Mean Girl lite.

“He’s kind of a slimy creep,” Robin admits. The kind of comment she thinks, but couldn’t ever really say with her last group of friends. It would break the loser code.

Stevie’s shoulders drop from around her ears. She’s still idly picking at the nail polish they just painted on her thumb, but she smiles over at Robin. A little sly, a little catty. “He touched my shoulder while we were leaving and I swear to god he left orange cheese puff residue behind.”

“Maybe half of your new clothes shouldn’t be dry clean only.”

“ Maybe he should help cover my dry cleaning bill if he’s going to put his hands on me in the workplace. I could call Family Video HR, probably. You know his dad owns like half of this strip mall, and people gave me shit about having money, I’m pretty sure they own the dry cleaning place too.”

“So why do these polyester nightmares smell like the BO of employees past?”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

With the job and Stevie back, Robin almost forgets that she spent the first three weeks of school sad and miserable. She’s maybe even a little distracted that they have plans tonight, and forgets that there are reasons other than the threat of bacterial infection to avoid the girl’s room in the language hallway. And more than any of that, it’s really hard to think about any of that when she can feel her bladder starting to pickle her brain.

The door to the bathroom swings open before she can exit the stall. Voices she recognizes as Patty Taylor and Molly Smith already mid-conversation filter in. “I mean she’s pretty, like really pretty, but I mean why would you even move to Hawkins.”

It’s definitely too late to leave.

“Carol said that she heard from Heather that she moved in with her aunt, she was from the city or something.”

The squelching sound of a lipgloss wand leaving the tube is punctuated by a bitchy hum, “Well, you know who spent all that time in the city this summer.”

“I mean yeah, but how would they have even met? I’ve heard like six different stories about why she was there.”

Patty’s voice echoes, through the crack in the stall door Robin can see her lean over top of the sink putting her face even closer to the water spotted mirror above it. “Well she was in that mall fire, but I heard she had to stay so long after initial treatment because she…”

There must be some facial expression she’s missing, Patty trails off like she’s dropped some grand secret. Robin isn’t a total loser, she hears gossip. She knows that Mrs. Click is going through a bitter divorce from her husband because he had that affair with the gas station attendant from the Chevron by the highway. She knows that Tim Morris got sent to military school after he put a cherry bomb in Mrs. O’Leary’s mailbox. She knows that Vickie is definitely a shoo-in for clarinet first chair even though Michael Lewis had it last year and he’s a senior this year.

And yeah okay two of those she had heard from Stevie.

But she thinks she should have had some clue that there was some kind of rumor going around about her. Molly wrinkles her forehead, maybe she isn’t the only one who has no clue about this rumor. “Because she what?”

“Because she lost the baby and they put her in the psych ward,” Patty says loud enough that it bounces off the tile walls of the bathroom. A hand covers her mouth and they both look around like they’ve just remembered that they’re in public. Robin pulls her feet up on the toilet seat with her.

“What baby?” Molly asks in a whisper that seems even louder with the way she forces it out.

“Come on, everyone knows the reason she was so upset that Steve died. He knocked her up while they were working together and with the stress she lost the baby. She was such a freak already, the new girl and her must have been in the same padded cell in the loony bin.”

“Really? I mean with Steve Harrington? ”

“I mean Carol said it so I’m pretty sure it has to be true, you know how close she used to be with Steve.”

The bell rings, sending them both fleeing from the bathroom with muttered curses. Robin stays in the stall too stunned by what she’s heard to move. Stunned and filled with the thought that all she wants right now is to see Stevie.

She bumps into Eddie Munson on the way to the payphone. He gives her an unreadable look, mostly eyebrows that she can’t see beneath his bangs anyway, so she isn’t sure why he even bothers. Is he wondering why she’s skipping class? Or did he see her running from the bathroom and now he’s wondering if maybe the rumors were only partially true, that she’s still pregnant and she hadn’t lost the baby like apparently half the school thinks.

If a wet rat like Munson knows more about her status in the school than she does she really might have to go back and hurl.

She puts in her change and dials the increasingly familiar number for the Henderson place.

“Hen-”

“I need you to come pick me up, now.”

It isn’t hard to convince the school nurse, who’s more worried about when she can slip away to sneak her next cigarette than she is about doing any nursing, that she’s too sick to stay. So she’s waiting out front when Stevie’s new Jeep rockets into the parking lot, the woman of the hour flinging herself out of it before it’s fully in park.

“What happened? What’s wrong? The kids are fine right?” She’s pressing the back of her hand to Robin’s forehead, the other at her side clenching into fists as she looks over Robin’s head for any creature or person that might need to be put down.

“Everything’s fine,” she lies, “I needed to see you.”

A single eyebrow raises, Robin helped her pluck that eyebrow into that arch and now it’s being used in disbelief at her own blatant lie. “Fine,” she relents, “I’ll tell you when we aren’t standing in the middle of the parking lot, okay?”

The radio is off but so are the doors, so even as Robin refuses to talk the sound of the wind rushing past them fills the silence of the car. With no destination in mind, Stevie seems to be driving a slow meandering circuit of Hawkins.

“I overheard Patty and Molly talking about us in the bathroom today.” She says only after they’ve passed Melvalds twice with no sign of parking.

“They were talking in the bathroom about us or they were talking about us in the bathroom.”

“That’s the same sentence twice.”

“No it’s not. In the bathroom or in the bathroom.” The emphasis is nonsensical, but after a second it clicks.

“They were in the bathroom. I guess I was also in the bathroom but it was definitely not about our bathroom conversation.”

“What were they saying?” Stevie noses out gossip like a search dog noses out missing kids.

Robin sticks her hand out the side of the car, dancing it up and down in the wind like a wave. Letting the force of it glide up and over her like she wishes she could just get over whatever it is that has her so upset. Gossip and rumor that she knows isn’t true.

“Technically you got to be two characters. They think we know each other from the psych ward because boy you got me pregnant and when you died I lost the baby and went crazy.”

Her seatbelt catches her hard against the chest, forcing the air out of her lungs. Stevie’s hit the brakes so hard that the smell of rubber is in the air, uncaring that they’re in the middle of a main road. She’s just looking at Robin with something, disbelief or outrage, maybe a little bit of that rage she gets when her people have been hurt.

“Patty said that? Patty Taylor? Patty with the retainer breath whose lipgloss makes it look like she’s always drooling on herself, Patty?”

A nod is enough answer for Stevie to let out a little humph, setting her eyes back to the road and easing them into drive like they’d just been caught by a stray redlight.

“What?”

She shakes her head, gazing around the upcoming turn like they don’t both know it’ll be the rundown place that used to be Benny’s. It’s going to be something mean, something she’s worried will make her sound too much like the person she used to be.

As far as Robin is concerned whatever it is won’t be any different than when she swung that phone at that Russian guard. Or crashed that car into Billy’s. It’s all just different ways of helping to protect the people she loves that aren’t as good at protecting themselves.

“Tell me,” she insists, wheedles even. “Whatever it is I won’t tell anyone else. It’s time honored girl code you have to tell me.”

“Girl code?”

“I’ll mimeo you a copy of the handbook, tell me. It’ll make me feel better.”

Stevie’s sigh is audible over the wind rushing past them, her side eye not bad enough that Robin is at all worried about it. “I just think it’s funny that she’s passing judgment on you and your possible pregnancy when everyone knows she’s banned from the U of I campus because she went streaking to impress a guy that wasn’t even interested in her. The only reason she doesn’t have an arrest record for it is because her dad is a former professor or donor or something and threatened funding if the Dean pressed charges.”

“Oh my god, really?”

“Totally, the guy was on the basketball team. He came back and told everyone when he came home for the pre-season kegger.”

She grabs Stevie’s hand off the gearshift, holds it just because she can. Relishes in the closeness the two of them can have now that she’s back and everything is better again. “You are the strongest woman I know, all this knowledge and you just keep it to yourself all the time.”

She snorts, squeezing Robin’s hand, “I literally don’t, I just told you something. Pretty sure that’s like if I had the nuclear launch codes or something and I gave them out to just one person because they’re having a really bad day.”

“Oh! Do you remember doing those stupid duck and cover drills in elementary school?”

“Oh that's really nice of you, Mrs. Buckley, but Aunt Claudia is expecting me home for dinner.” Stevie's voice calls from outside the door, only a surprise because they didn't have plans to hang out today.

She scrambles from her bed, the wire on her headphones tangling around her neck until the weight of her walkman drags them off her. Flinging the door open she's just in time to save her best friend. “Thanks for bringing her up, Mom, we’re just gonna hang out in my room til Steph has to leave, okay?”

Shoving Stevie toward the bed before her Mom has a chance to say anything else, Robin at least smiles before she shuts the door in her mother’s face.

“What happened?”

Stevie is digging through her jewelry box, has a ring Robin picked up at a garage sale because it looked cool and didn’t think about trying on, and doesn’t bother looking ashamed at being caught snooping. “Why does something have to be wrong?”

She slips the ring on her finger, the gold band and mossy green stone looks better on her than it would have Robin. “You can keep it if you admit something happened.” Stevie starts to raise an eyebrow, but it halts half way up her forehead when Robin gives the Family Video vest she’s still wearing a tug.

Her smile goes lopsided, tilts too high on one side before she wanders over to flop down on the bed. “I, maybe, did something stupid.”

Flopping down beside her, Robin swears when she lands on her walkman first. “Stupid like when you put Re-Animator in the romance section or stupid like when you tripped into the Back to the Future cutout and apologized cause you weren't wearing your glasses.”

“Stupid like I don't know, Rob, you know how at first I was pretending that I didn't know anyone when they came in right, cause I'm supposed to be new in town.”

“Like bad witness protection because they put you right back where you left.”

“Right, well I kinda forgot to do that this morning when I was working by myself?”

Looking now she can tell this is something that has had Stevie really worked up. The strands of hair at the front of her face have lost some of their beachy wave from where she's been fussing with it, pushing it back, tugging at it. Waiting for when she saw Robin again.

Sitting up from the bed, she grabs Stevie's hand in a too tight grip. “What happened? You're okay right? They didn't recognize you and do anything shitty, right?”

“Well that's the thing,” she somehow looks even more distressed, it gives Robin another clue. Stevie is afraid she's broken some unspoken rule of girlhood by doing whatever it is she's done. Which means the story will be interesting.

“So Roger came in, you know Roger right? Second stringer on the basketball team, his footwork was too slow to ever actually be any good on the court but he had an amazing three pointer as long as no one was ever anywhere near him. So he'd make a great professional HORSE player but not really going anywhere with the actual game. He came in with his girlfriend-”

“Mindy Peterson.”

“Right, and when did they even get together?” She shakes her head. “Not the point, I was flipping through the Tiger Beat that Cindy left in the drawer after her shift, cause this months Car and Driver was a total waste of money. And he wanders up, surprising me cause the bell over the door still doesn't work and I thought I was alone in there. He starts talking to me like he already knows me.”

“He was flirting with you in front of his girlfriend!”

“That wasn't flirting, he was just being friendly; and I didn't know Mindy was there, she was back in the romance section picking something out.”

“So he's flirting with you while his girlfriend is picking out something for date night.”

Stevie rolls her eyes, shoving not so gently at Robin's shoulder. “He was talking to me like he already knew me, and I do know him so I did the same. I mentioned the last game he played in, well we played in. And then he starts looking at me and I realized what I look like.”

She gestures down at herself, and Robin isn't sure if this is a compliment time or a diffuse the situation time. Stevie really doesn't look that much like she used to. Her face has softened, her hair is longer, and she's leaned into the blonde highlights that she had in the summer.

“He's all ‘Do I know you?’” She continues, and Robin laughs, it's crazy how deep she can still get her voice and even though Roger does not have anything approaching the bass that Stevie has given him. It makes the situation feel even more bizarre. “it's not like I can say, ‘What you don't recognize me from all the times I gave you advice on how to keep yourself open on offense so you could actually get a hand on the ball?’”

Robin reaches for the nail polish on her bedside table, the robin's egg blue Stevie has taken to and the taupe brown that she likes but doesn't clash with Stevie's. They both pick at their nails when they get nervous, and Stevie has definitely been nervous.

“You could have said that,” she says just to be contrary, Stevie hand held in hers it means Robin avoids the smack that would have come.

She puts blue on every finger but one, letting Stevie think as she caps the polish and grabs the taupe to finish the hand. “Hi remember me, I faked my death so I could get boobies without getting murdered in the pumpkin patch I already avoided almost dying in once. Did you know they give you a new social security number for that?”

“So what did you actually do?”

“I lied, obviously.” She blinks twice, opens her eyes wider so she looks doe-eyed and vacant. “Oh gosh, well I guess you wouldn’t remember me. I used to only come to Hawkins during the holidays to babysit my little cousin, and I always try to catch a basketball game when I’m in town. Sometimes I’d sneak out and go to the parties, but I’m shy so...”

“Oh my god, like you’ve ever been shy in your life.”

“I’m going to have to be now!” She throws her hands up, fingers spread wide to avoid accidentally smudging her fresh nails. “It’s not like I can lie my way out of admitting to sharing homeroom with someone next. I’m just lucky Roger’s never took his eyes off the bottom button of my blouse.”

“Do you remember that movie I made you watch a couple months ago, the black and white one?”

“Oh yeah, that really narrows it down.”

“Gaslight, the one with the opera singer’s niece and her new husband tries to make her think she’s crazy. We just lie until everyone is convinced that it’s the truth.”

“The truth being that Stephanie Henderson always existed?”

Eye contact isn’t easy, unless it’s Stevie. They hold each other’s gaze as the excitement bubbles between them. “Exactly,” Robin says, “and that if they think anything else, they’re crazy.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She says, but it sounds like ‘you’re on.’

“Can I be a bitch for a second?” Stevie asks. She doesn’t look up from whatever magazine she was already flipping through when Robin walked through the door. It’s too casual, too calculated.

Progress has been slow but she’s slowly getting Stevie to the point where she doesn’t feel like she has to be nice all the time just because she’s a girl. Where she still acts like the bitchy dingus she'd been before, just a happier version.

“Obviously, just let me clock in.”

When she gets back Stevie has a stack of returns that she’s working on rewinding. One thumb in her mouth as she chews at the cuticle. “So what’s-?

“If I hear one more word about Eddie the Freak, I’m going to lose it, Rob. I mean what’s he got that’s so great? I could have taken us to the All State Championships if I hadn’t gotten that last concussion saving the twerps. I’ve saved all those twerps’ lives at least two times! I was cool. I am cool! But all I get to hear these days is ‘Oh, Stevie, Eddie just did the coolest thing in the campaign today.’ ‘Thanks for the advice, Stevie, but I’m going to go with what Eddie said instead.’ ‘I know it’s your only day off, Stevie, but could you pick us up late after school? There's Hellfire today.’ ‘Stevie, since Keith actually likes you could you hold Ladyhawke for us. Oh, no we’re going to do a movie night with Eddie.’”

She’s panting slightly when she’s finished, like she’s been holding this in for weeks. With all the quotes she’s racked up she probably has been.

“You know he kicked my tray off the lunch table last week,” she encourages. She snags a box of Sour Patch Kids from the candy counter. Popping one in her mouth before waving the bag under Stevie’s frowning face. She doesn’t even have a movie turned on. Well she does, but it looks like it was one of the weekend returns Stevie wasn’t going to put on Watership Down.

“Well he’s inconsiderate,” Stevie says, digging around in the box until she finds a red one and popping it into her mouth. “Everything is all fuck the man until he’s the man in question and then he’s the only one anyone should listen to about anything. Lucas is going to make the basketball team, he’s been working really hard on it with Jay and some of the other guys on the team.”

She’s basically taken the whole box of candy at this point. Robin doesn’t even care, just watches as Stevie picks out her favorite colors and lines them up on her magazine on the counter like a sweet and sour army. Completely oblivious to the quiet devastation that’s playing out on her face. Her brow furrowed and tight when she talks about Lucas, basketball another thing Robin wonders if she’s being unintentionally left out of.

“I just know Munson’s going to turn it into some us or them thing, like it isn’t possible to like more than one thing.”

“Maybe you-”

“And maybe that’s why they’ve been so cool with all of this,” she shrugs her shoulder in place of gesturing down at herself, too busy tearing apart a lone sourpatch general, “like it was a send off before they moved on to an actual guy who can actually do something for them. That’s probably a better send off than I deserve even right, like I mean, the kind of person I used to be. Maybe I don’t get more than one happy thing.”

Robin flattens the little red and green army underneath the flat of her hand, “Absolutely not. You are not going to let a… a… a dumpster raccoon with Mrs. Goble’s mystery meat on the bottom of his stupid shoes make you think that you don’t deserve the entire world.”

“But-” Stevie tears at the cardboard of the box between her fingers, leaving little pieces of it on the floor between her feet.

“But nothing, your little shithead kids might have latched onto the first giant nerd that looked at them when they crossed through the doors of the high school like freshly hatched ducklings but you’re the coolest person they’ve ever had the chance to meet and it’s their loss if they don’t notice.”

“I mean they’re in high school so-”

“So they’ve decided to get all the stupid decisions out at the start. It’s a bold decision but maybe that will keep them from-”

“From crashing their dad’s truck into half the cars at prom?”

“I wish one of them had been yours,” she steals the last red Sour Patch from between Stevie’s fingers, popping it into her mouth before her best friend can do anything about it.

“You’re never going to pass your driver’s test, I hope you like the bus.”

“You’re going to drive me to work forever because you love me,” she drags love out as she dances away from Stevie’s slapping hands, snagging a stack of tapes to return to the shelves as she goes.

There’s no way Stevie isn’t rolling her eyes, but Robin also knows that she’ll look all soft and pleased. Knows because a yellow candy smacks hard against the copy of The Breakfast Club that’s right beside her head.

“What the hell is going on with that rabbit?”

“Pretty sure it’s proof that you should never be trusted to pick the shift movie.”

“Stevie’s being a total headcase this week, will you tell her to chill out,” Henderson delivers what Robin is going to generously call a request after cornering her between fourth and fifth periods. Cause if it isn’t a request then it’s an order or a demand, and her small friend is not going to be happy with what she has to say in that case.

“Well that depends, Dusty, why are you calling my best friend a headcase?”

He rolls his eyes at her, a trait that Stevie might put up with but Robin is not about to. “Because she’s being one, every time I try to talk to her it’s like…” he trails off. That’s probably for the best.

“It’s like all you can talk about is your new best friend Eddie? It’s like you aren’t interested in her now that you’ve got some new brother that you can hang out with instead? It’s like all she’s good for is a ride to see the boys? It’s like you can’t ask her how to talk to girls anymore or how you should do your hair because she’s not the same anymore.”

“I didn’t say that,” he shrieks, hands waving between them like he can swipe away the thousand bees that are her accusations. She feels stinging mad actually now that she’s started putting words out there for the things that she’s feeling.

“You don’t have to say it, it’s what you’ve been doing.”

“Did she say that?” Robin gently swings her locker door just shy of closed. Dustin looks younger than she thinks she’s seen him since the first time they met. Looks smaller than she’s seen him in her life. Looking up at her with big watery eyes, waiting for her to make it okay.

Stevie’s gonna be pissed if she doesn’t at least try to make it okay.

She picks each word carefully, not wanting him to feel completely off the hook, “She didn’t say it exactly like that.”

Dustin looks at the floor, his hat obscuring his face enough that she can’t tell if he’s followed through on the watery eyes to full crying. The ambiguity makes him easier to talk to for a second, now that she doesn’t have to worry about watching what his expression is doing.

“She’s still the same person who walked down the train tracks with a kid she barely knew looking for his runaway science experiment. She’s still the person who did your hair for the snowball. She’s the person who went hunting for Russian spies with you. She’s the person that would like to keep giving you terrible advice on how to date.”

His next breath is phlegmy and ragged. “It wasn’t terrible advice.”

“Right, right, your Moonchild Empress or whatever.”

Dustin hasn’t been quiet once in the entire time that she’s known him so Robin assumes the quiet means he’s done talking. Swinging her locker back open she goes back to what she was doing before he interrupted, which had, coincidentally been Stevie related. Deciding whether or not she was going to bring her copy Watership Down to work with her so Stevie could see what was up with the rabbits.

“They should meet.”

Robin had also been leaning toward introducing her to Fiver and Hazel, but she doesn't think that’s what Dustin means.

“Who should-”

“Stevie and Eddie,” he looks at her with a wide grin. An expression she recognizes from shortly before she found herself in an elevator to hell. Dustin thinks he's just had a good idea. “Stevie can see that Eddie's super cool, Eddie will stop- And once they know each other we can hang out all the time, why didn't I think of this before!”

It does occur to her that she could remind Dustin that Stevie existed before July of 1985. That she went to school here and definitely already knows Eddie, that's where half the problem comes from even. But then she thinks of how much fun their next sleepover will be, when Stevie has brand new things to hate and make fun of.

“Maybe you're right Dustin, maybe that is the problem.”

He pumps his fist in time with the warning bell. “This is going to be great, I can't believe I didn't already think of this.”

He's still talking to himself as he starts to scamper off to a class he's going to be late to. But she isn’t about to let him leave without making sure he took away the real lesson he was supposed to. “And pass along to your little friends that her new meds didn't lobotomize her brain or amputate her legs. She can still tell you how to talk to girls, she can still shoot a free throw, she can still show you how to change a tire after it's blown out on the interstate.”

Dustin's staying with the Wheelers, Claudia has the night shift which means she and Stevie have the whole house to themselves.

Robin is making herself at home in Stevie's room, moving extra quilts and pillows from the linen closet into a fort she's making on the floor. Because today is going to be the best bitch day in the world, once Stevie makes it home from playing chauffeur. Because today Stevie gave in and went to lunch and a movie with Dustin and his new best friend Eddie.

She keeps trying to imagine what Stevie will say. Maybe Munson dips his fries in syrup or something disgusting. Maybe he showed up to the movie in his nerd brigade shirt. Maybe he showed up thirty minutes late! And the Stevie in her head has devastating things to say about all of those things, but she knows none of them are right. She just can't manage the right amount of even toned bitchery that Stevie can, the clever double entendre that makes the person she's insulting look all the dumber for getting upset at the blatant quips.

“Did you really bike here, you weirdo? You know I would have picked you up.” Stevie's voice carries down the hallway, accented by the sound of her keys hitting the bowl by the door and her shoes getting picked up from the floor and set down in the shoe tree.

“You got that bike rack for the Jeep. I wanted to make sure it actually got some use.”

The answering laugh is the one Robin possessively thinks of as hers, a little ugly, high pitched and snorting. It makes it to the bedroom just a second before Stevies face. A face that's wearing the lipgloss with the glitter in it, the one she saves for when she's trying to impress someone or make them look at her mouth.

“You look nice?”

“Such a charmer, Rob, no wonder you've got so many girls banging down your door.” She eases herself down onto the floor beside Robin, smoothing out a buttery yellow skirt that has to be new. She knows every single item in Stevie's closet, except this skirt.

She isn't going to think about how Stevie went out shopping without her though. She'd rather focus her attention somewhere more entertaining. “How was lunch?”

Stevie fusses with the edge of her skirt, rolling the hem of it between two fingers. Her face pinking though under that she's smiling. “Ugh you wouldn't even believe Henderson was a twerp, as usual. Insisted that he had to have one side of the table to himself, ordered two milkshake flavors so he could mix them together, and of course I'm paying for the whole thing.”

“Dustin being a dweeb is old news, what else happened at lunch.”

“I mean,” she trails off, making a face Robin has never seen before. Which shouldn't be possible, she thinks she is supposed to have seen all of Stevie's faces. “Munson was a total freak, obviously. Kept calling me ‘My Lady’ and all that nerd shit. You’d think I came in with a cast with the way he opened every door and kept pulling out my chair.”

It all sounds decidedly unfreakish to Robin, in fact it sounds like Stevie finds the guy charming. She realizes with something close to horror that she does actually recognize the expression on Stevie’s face. Just not on her best friend. It’s the bashful, twitterpated expression of a girl at a sleepover trying not to admit she has a crush. An expression that might as well be a death knell, cause the only time she’s ever seen it is right before date night started beating girl’s night.

“Not that it matters, the guy doesn’t know how to take a joke,” Stevie goes on, her smile still too shy to fully bloom but no less in place. Even as she pretends that whatever this is is supposed to be some dealbreaker. “I asked him what he gets out of playing Halflings and Half-wits with the dweeb squad and I thought he was going to climb on the table right there. Ed-weird went on for like five minutes on how the gremlins are some of the best players he’s ever played with, and they're an endless fount of creativity that keeps him perpetually on his toes.”

Stevie never actually stood a chance. And if Robin had been paying attention she would have realized that.

There wasn’t anyone who loved passionate, nerdy people as much as Stevie.

Eddie Munson wore his king of the loud mouthed nerds crown with pride. And he was as obsessed with the gremlins as Stevie was

“Why are we talking about him?” She flops over until her head is in Robin’s lap, flopping one arm outside of the pillow fortress to reach under the bed. She crows, victorious, holding a jar that's pond scum brown like it’s treasure. “Had to hide this after Dust put it in his hair. Put this goop on your face and tell me about what Vickie said in band yesterday again. Cause I'm pretty sure she was dating Dan Summers last year, and he didn't really seem like the type of guy to stay with his high school girlfriend.”

It's coincidence, pure and simple, that puts her right outside O'Donnell's fourth period class. Thompson's study hall, her own fourth period, was technically across the building but everyone knew Mr. Thompson came to work on Mondays too hungover to care about attendance.

And study hall didn't have a certain wannabe friend-dater standing outside it, debating whether or not he was going to go inside.

She is still figuring out her angle of attack when it looks like he's decided he is actually going to class. Considering O’Donnell is the type to write office referral slips to kids who aren’t meant to be in her room for ‘being a distraction’ there isn’t really any time for subtlety. Still, she’s surprised by the tone of her own voice when she shouts, “Munson!”

Heads turn in the hallway, of course they do. Faces she only knows by virtue of twelve years of school watching on with a lust for future violence she recognizes from that concrete bunker. But if Munson is concerned that a girl he's never spoken to is yelling at him, he doesn't look it as he turns on both heels to face her.

He smiles first, benignly pleasant. But Stevie taught her that trick, smiling to diffuse anger or hide how she has no idea how the person talking to her actually knows her. Munson is doing both, they had two classes together last semester and she was in the orchestra for the last school musical.

The blankness eventually clears from his eyes, “Bye Bye Buckley!”

Not about to be distracted by the dumbest reference she's ever heard, and with the eyes of at least two people she can see on her, she drags Munson away from class. It's bound to be all around the school by the dismissal bell, but rumor is less important than the mission.

The girls room by the library is always abandoned. The mirrors are dingy or cracked and it always smells like cat piss for no discernable reason. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” He looks around the bathroom with an inquisitive eye like the grimy bluish tile is somehow more interesting than her. “I'm not actually carrying if you were-”

He doesn't have the decency to stumble when she shoves at his chest, trying to push him back into the stall doors.

“What are your intentions with Stevie?”

“Ah yes, the mysterious cousin Henderson. Who says I have intentions?” His only saving grace is that it takes her too long to get her thoughts in order. A miasma of rants at the tip of her tongue about Stevie and how she was too good for him and any thoughts he might be having about her.

But in the time it takes to see through her friend based rage, she’s able to watch a transformation take place on Eddie’s face. The smug aloofness that had taken over his face from the moment she cornered him in the hallway washes away. Leaving behind something giddy and young, bright eyes and a flushed face. “Unless she was asking about me. You two are bosom friends, are you not Diana? That would make me Gilbert Blythe, hell of a role.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people who wish they could break a slate over your head.”

“You’re probably right, doesn’t answer my question though. Was your dear Anne Shirley talking about me?” He scuffs a boot against the floor. Doing an impressive impression of a bashful school boy while standing in front of her in his ratted out, heavy metal glory. There are at least four chains that she can spot on his outfit right now but his face would be just as at home on Opie Taylor.

But she isn’t going to get fooled by some routine. She has something to say and she’s going to make sure she says it.

“She’s really special, Munson. She’s not some cheerleader you fuck in the woods because she wants to get back at her parents that are divorcing and you’re the scariest thing available that isn’t actually dangerous.”

“Tell me how you really feel, Buckley.” The retort seems to drag itself from his mouth on instinct. Cause the aw shucks routine he’d been giving is lying broken on the floor replaced by open mouthed shock.

“I am.” The bell rings, marking them both officially late for class. She glares him down, waiting to see if he’ll leave, effectively flinching first. He glares back. “She’s an athlete, likes sports.”

Maybe it’s wrong to list the things about Stevie that she knows Munson won’t like. But she also isn’t about to let her best friend water herself down for some stupid boy.

“Wayne will be thrilled to have someone who understands what he’s talking about. Go team.”

“She hates fantasy. Dustin loaned her his copy of Fellowship of the Ring and she gave it back when they kept singing.”

“I’m sure she’d like it if I sang them for her.”

“She isn’t going to become some demure, church mouse just because you’re around. She’s snarky and confident and, and…”

He sets a hand on her shoulder in a way that is so patronizing she wishes she were as good at being a bitch as Stevie was. But she suppresses her first instinct to bite him if only because she’s working at keeping up her record of 4578 days without biting a classmate.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” he says, “but it sounds like you and your hot best friend have been talking about me. So thanks for that intel, Bucks.”

People wearing leather and motorcycle boots shouldn’t be able to skip. The stupid hanky in his stupid pocket flaps behind him like a wagging tail as Munson leaves her in the girls room with the smell of ammonia.

Stevie has Breakfast at Tiffany’s playing on the TV when Robin makes it to work. Keith let them have most of their shifts together but drew the line at letting Stevie shut the store down to come pick her up after school. So on days where Stevie works a double, she’s stuck arriving to work sweaty and guessing at whatever movie will have ended up on the big TV.

And today she gets to catch Stevie standing in the middle of the floor, a stack of tapes in her arms, while she watches the party happening in Holly Golightly’s apartment. Audrey Hepburn swaying with her guest in the middle of the floor.

“Someone’s in a mood.”

From over her shoulder, Stevie sends Robin a look. Something loaded with dry humor and a smugness that usually means something juicy happened in the time before Robin got there.

Usually.

There’s something about the look today that feels personally directed at her.

“Well it was this or Some Like it Hot, and the stay at home moms are weird about black and white movies that aren’t the first few minutes of Wizard of Oz.”

“That’s sepia.”

“Bless you.”

Making sure Stevie can see her rolling her eyes, she heads to the back to clock in. By the time she makes it back, Stevie has the volume turned down on Holly Golightly’s romantic disasters. She’s back behind the counter, head pillowed in her hands and Robin remembers why people used to be a little scared of her popular kid cabaret. Walking up the center aisle, she feels like she’s headed straight toward a tiger with its mouth open and she’s about to put her head in there.

“So you’ll never believe what happened earlier,” Stevie taps her nail against her cheek.

“Paul Collins came in with his mistress to look at porn again?”

Humming, Stevie doesn’t say anything as Robin comes behind the counter with her. There’s a stack of tapes that need to be rewound and a roll of Be Kind Rewind stickers that need to be stuck to cases.

“Still time for that,” she says right as Robin started to think they were going to drop it. “Sally Tyler called from the payphone.”

“Sally from the basketball team?”

“Yeah,” that smile is even wider. This is almost certainly payback for the You Suck board. “I’m thinking about joining her rec team but we’ve played one-on-one in the park once or twice.”

“And she had a Family Video emergency that only you could solve?”

“Sorta. She was just really concerned, she’d heard a rumor that my best friend was dragging the guy she saw me having lunch with this weekend into the girls room.”

This is definitely payback for the You Suck board. Stevie’s looking a little too pleased with herself as she smiles at what can only be Robin’s slack jawed surprise.

“I get if you're mad,” she says and that’s all she can assume is happening, she isn’t sure how else to read what’s happening on Stevie’s face. “But-”

“Thank you.”

“I was just trying to- What?”

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes, swipes a half hearted smack to Robin’s shoulder. “I’ve been on the other side of that, you know. Well meaning friends pulling me aside to ask what my intentions are.”

“Oh my god, did she follow us in there?”

Delight makes Stevie’s eyes sparkle, “Did you actually? I love you. Did you give him hell?”

“I think he got the upperhand.”

“I think it’s all the playing pretend. The shitheads will run circles around the unprepared too.”

It seems a little too good to be true. “You really aren’t mad?”

Someone abandoned The Breakfast Club at the scene where Ally Sheedy gets the makeover. It had seemed like a stupid scene when she’d seen it in theaters, now it makes something weird pit in the bottom of her stomach. She doesn’t get the chance to hit rewind, to send Allison back in time so she can be strange and herself again, because Stevie is flipping her around and pulling her into a bone crushing hug.

“First of all,” she says into the side of Robin’s hair, “the only thing I’m even a little miffed about is you thinking I couldn’t kick Munson’s ass myself. But no one’s ever done anything like that for me before so I’m cool with letting it slide.”

“But we are acknowledging that you definitely have a thing for the guy with the rattiest hair in the school. Probably even Roane county.” Robin says, face pressed into the meat of Stevie’s shoulder.

Stevie shoves her away with a groan that Robin’s laughter is already drowning out. “Yeah, alright. He’s kind of okay I guess.”

“Such sweet words for the father of your brood.”

“He’s not the father of my anything,” she flips her hair over one shoulder, “anyway I think he gets off on it so I’m gonna keep being mean to him.”

“That was more than I wanted to know about either of you.”

“No it wasn’t, you like that I’m mean too. You get all sad faced when you think I’m trying to bury my impulses.”

For the second time today Robin is left too surprised to say anything. She’s left gaping, not that Stevie is looking at her now; too busy picking at the nail polish left on her pinky.

“I like it,” she says quietly after a moment. Robin has shut her mouth by the time Stevie looks up at her again, something soft but serious on her face. She reaches across the counter to grab Robin by the hand, melding what’s left of their coordinating manicures by linking their fingers. “You’re my number one. Even if Eddie does anything about anything, he’s going to have to compete with you.”

Neither of them move as the weight of the moment surrounds them like one of Mrs. Henderson’s quilts. Heavy and homey and right. But they are still at work and as the bell beside the door dings, and they break their silence to greet their new customer in tandem, they shrug off the heavy sincerity for something more functional. Stevie’s smile turns sly, and she tugs Robin closer while keeping an eye on the man now browsing the comedies. “You’ll never guess who came in earlier to ask if we had Nine and a Half Weeks yet.”

#stevieweek24 #stevie week #Stevie Harrington #transfem Steve Harrington #Stevie Henderson #Steve Henderson #platonic soulmates Steve and Robin #platonic Stobin #Stobin #Steve and Robin #steddie #pre Steddie #Robin POV #I was asking myself why I didn't get all 6 fics I had planned written before the week started after a month of writing #and realized this is nearly 10k cause I have chronic can't shut up disease #minimum 2 more coming at you this week get hype

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xoxoladyaz · 1 year

Text

It Hits Different This Time

Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Rock Star Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five

“Steve.”

He hears Robin knocking on the door, her knuckles tapping firmly against the wood.

“STEVE.”

He’s lying on the bed in Robin’s guest bedroom, limbs starfished across the plush gray comforter, staring at the ceiling fan. Taylor Swift is singing to him, blasting from the Alexa speaker next to him.

Oh my, love is a lie, shit my friends say to get me by

“Alexa, volume up.”

“Steve – STEVE!”

It hits different, it hits different this time

“Alexa, off,” Robin says as she marches into the room. Taylor’s voice cuts off almost immediately and Steve huffs, frustrated.

“Steve, as much as I love listening to your ‘Sad Taylor Swift’ playlist, you need to eat something. Go for a walk. Take a shower.”

“I’d rather not.”

Sighing, Robin kicks his left leg until he’s made enough room for her to collapse down beside him and gaze up at the spinning fan.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

They lay in silence.

“It’s just – our three-year anniversary, Robin.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t even text me.”

“I know.”

“And the supermodels at the club! And the tweets!”

“I know, Steve.”

There’s moisture pricking at the inside of his eyes now. “I just – it’s dumb, okay? I thought we could make this work. But I guess I’m not as important to him as he is to me.”

“Dingus,” Robin chides, and he turns his face away so she can’t see that he’s actually crying now. (She still probably knows that he is; Robin always knows. He just doesn’t want anyone to see.) “Okay, is Eddie Munson a huge idiot? Yes, and he has been for as long as we’ve known him. Is he kind of an asshole now that he’s famous? Yes. Do I think this is the end? Not necessarily.”

Steve snorts. “It’s been four days, Robin. Nothing for four days. I think it’s already ended.”

Robin cuddles up to his side so now they’re legitimately snuggling together. “Look, all I’m saying is he’s going to be back in the state in a few days and I think you owe it yourself to at least have a conversation with him. Either you two decide to work things out and start communicating better or you decide that he’s not pulling his weight to make his relationship work and you get closure. Either way, I think you need to talk to him.”

“Yeah,” Steve sniffles. “You’re probably right.”

“Steven, I’m always right.”

“I’m sorry, do you want to talk about the Pixar question you fumbled on trivia night?”

“Dingus, I swear to god if you don’t let it go - ”

/////

Eddie’s groggy and nauseous and fuck the sun is too bright. He pulls at the window-shades as he stumbles into their kitchen, dropping his Louis Vuitton bag on the floor. The fact that he’s managing to walk while coming down from a five day bender that he barely fucking remembers is kind of a miracle.

“Steve! Stevie, baby, I’m home!”

Silence.

What day is it today, Saturday? He’s probably at the farmer’s market with Robin. Eddie’s a few days early anyways, wanted it to be a surprise. And honestly, it’s probably a good thing Steve’s not home, Eddie needs to keep sobering up.

He pulls a fresh bottle of water out of the fridge and collapses onto the restored dining-room chairs they bought a few months ago. He tips it back and drinks it down greedily, swallowing the cool water down his aching throat. “Oh, that’s good,” he moans to himself, dropping the now empty bottle onto the dining room table.

The empty bottle that clangs against something. Squinting, Eddie opens his eyes and looks down.

There’s a small box sitting at his spot, a card laying haphazardly onto the side. It looks like someone opened it and scribbled all over what they originally wrote.

Eddie frowns and grabs for the card. It’s Steve’s writing. Whatever he’s crossed out is unreadable. Instead, all there is is the following:

I would say Happy Anniversary, but judging by the fact that (1) you didn’t return my call or even text me back and (2) the paps caught you at the club with the guys and a bunch of supermodels instead, I’m going to assume that you’re not interested in celebrating it anymore.

Eddie feels his stomach sink so fast that he’s going to lose all the water he just drank.

Look, Eds, I am so proud of you for making your dream come true. I would never ask you to give that up or sacrifice your music for me. But I’m tired of feeling alone in this relationship. Of feeling like you don’t love me as much as I love you. Because I would do anything for you, but I think this all proves that you wouldn’t do the same for me.

Anyways, I still want you to have your gift. It wouldn’t make sense to give it to anyone else.

Your biggest fan, Steve

He can’t see straight and it’s not because of the drugs. He can’t breathe and it’s not because of his asthma or his wicked smoking habit.

He grabs the small box, flips it open, and chokes back a sob.

It’s a perfect replica of Aragorn’s ring, the ring he’s given that proves he is Isilduir’s heir. He’s wanted it foryears, but it was never something that he thought he could buy for himself. Sure, he could buy whatever random luxury shit without a sweat, but something so meaningful to him? Because reading The Lord of the Rings saved his fucking life in high school? His brain couldn’t deal with him buying it for himself. His therapist says it’s one of his many hang-ups regarding money and fame and his self-esteem issues, but that’s not what matters right now.

What matters is that Steve gave this to him, loved him enough to have it made for him.

And now Steve is gone.

Eddie grabs for his phone with shaking hands and checks the date.

“Fuck.”

Five days.

He’s five days too fucking late.

He’s dialing Jeff before he can even realize he’s doing it.

“Dude, I really don’t want to be talking to you right now.”

“Jeff,” Eddie barely gets out, his voice choking on a sob. “Steve is gone.”

Jeff’s silent for a moment.

“I’m on my way.”

#steddie #steddie week #steddie angst #steddie fanfic #rock star eddie munson #angst #stranger things #hurt/comfort #Steve x Eddie #lmk if you'd like a follow-up to this or not #hits different Taylor swift #Steve harrington #Eddie munson #stobin #stobin friendship #rock star au #fame au #corroded coffin

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moonstruckme · 6 months

Note

Could I request something for Steve harrington x reader? I’d love to read something in which they get high together and at first they’re having fun and so but then reader starts to feel uncomfortable and it’s like no more fun for her and she’s scared that she’ll experience a bad trip and he’s trying his best to comfort her in his state

Or the other way around so that Steve’s the one getting scared would also be so interesting to read⭐️🧚

Thanks for requesting!

cw: weed

Steve Harrington x fem!reader ♡ 762 words

When you come back downstairs with the freshly delivered box of pizza warm and fragrant with grease in your hands, you’re not sure you’ve ever been so deeply content in your life.

“Steve,” you announce, “this is about to be the best meal you’ve ever had.”

Your boyfriend twists around on the sofa to see you, and you’re not sure if you were expecting applause, exactly, but it’s a bit dissatisfying when he frowns.

“How long is it gonna take for the smell to get out of here?” Steve asks.

You shrug. The movement feels loose and pleasantly heavy, just like the rest of you. “We can probably air it out in a couple hours if you want to. What, worried your parents are gonna suddenly start caring what you do?”

His frown worsens. “I dunno, what if they do? The only time they ever got really pissed was when I spilled punch on the couch. I don’t want to get weed smell in the carpet or whatever.”

“It barely smells in here,” you laugh. “It won’t stick around, trust me.”

You set the pizza down on the coffee table and flop back onto the couch beside him. Everything about Steve is especially nice right now, even the tickle of his leg hair against your thigh, and you tilt your head up to kiss softly at his jaw.

Still, the frown persists.

You try to rally your most can-do energy. Steve so naturally takes the lead in most situations, it’s tough for you to remember that you’re both in your wheelhouse right now. You’re the only one of you who has experience being high, and you’d encouraged him when he asked about it. It’s your job to fix him.

“Listen,” you say, keeping your voice light as meringue, “the smell usually goes away pretty fast, but we can totally air it out if it’d make you feel better.” Steve relaxes slightly, and you dot more kisses along his jaw to help the process along. “I won’t let you get in trouble. Don’t get paranoid on me, baby.”

You know you’ve said something wrong when his breathing pauses.

“Is that something that happens a lot?”

Shit. “No, no,” you amend quickly. “It’s not common, and you’re not the kind of person who would anyways. Let’s just eat our pizza before it gets cold, okay?”

“What’s the kind of person that would?”

You laugh. It slips out of you like your windpipe’s been oiled up, easy and natural as breathing. “Stevie, baby.” You turn your body towards him and take his face in your hands, looking him deep in his eyes. They’re really pretty, the soft brown made darker by the low light of the basement and his blown pupils, and it takes you a few heartbeats to remember what you wanted to say. “You’re fine, okay? You’ll feel so much better if you eat some pizza, I promise.”

Something in Steve’s expression eases. He looks back at you with a mixture of tenderness and amusement. “You’re like a dog with a bone about this pizza,” he observes. You grin.

“Have you smelled it?”

“Mhm, it smells good.”

“That’s the smell we should be talking about, is all I’m saying.”

He sighs and tips forward until his head rests against your shoulder, fluffy hair tickling the underside of your jaw. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be a bummer.”

“You’re not a bummer,” you tell him earnestly, petting the back of his head. You feel warm, both from the toasty basement and something soft and mushy inside you. “I’m just trying to keep you from spiraling out. You can trust me, you know?”

“I know.” Steve takes a breath, turning his head to the side so his exhale blows hot against your neck and you can hear him clearly when he says, “You never usually call me baby.”

Now you feel warmer than warm. “No?”

“Nope. You’re saying it a lot today.”

“Well, pot makes me sappy.”

Steve chuckles, his back shaking. He turns so he’s looking up at you. You brush a hair away from his eye.

“Don’t usually play with my hair so much, either.”

“You don’t usually let me,” you counter.

He hums. “I’m rethinking my priorities.”

You laugh, and he smiles. It blooms over his face slow and warm like a sunrise. You weave your fingers in close to his scalp.

“I want you to feel better,” you whisper dotingly, “but I still really want the pizza.”

“Feed it to me? I don’t feel like moving.”

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ncis-yp · 6 months

Text

Soaked (Tony x Reader)

Idk wtf to call it but it popped into my head. I might write more on it later 🤷‍♀️.

Tony had an awful day at work. An awful gruesome death had crossed his eyes and the victim resembled you. He had been stressing since the afternoon, not being able to contact you due to his phone being out of order… stupid flip phone.

He worried about you. He knew you were at either college or working. Remembering that today you didn’t have to carry a double shift behind the bar at Stevie’s. He was grateful for that. The murder had scarred his mind. It then occurred to him how it could’ve been you. How anyone of these murders could’ve been you.

When Gibbs dismissed them, he sped home at felony speeds. Gotta get home to make sure (y/n)’s okay Was the only thing on his mind. As he hit 120 on the highway. His corvette weaving through the light 7 pm traffic.

You were safe at home, showering when you heard the door open. You knew Tony was home. Dinner was on the stove still warm, he usually waited till you could sit with him so you were expecting to find him sitting on the couch reading a magazine or searching for a movie in the TV.

You heard the bathroom door open.

“Hi baby how was -“ you were interrupted by Tony’s entire figure entered the shower, clothes and all. “Tony what the fuck?” You somewhat giggled as he embraced you tightly. You hugged him back. The water soaking his suit all the way down to the socks. You rubbed his back as he held you.

“Im so happy you’re alive” was all he said in that moment as you stood in the water. “I’m so happy”

“Of course, baby” you reply. “Of course”

You wondered what was going on. He was in the shower with you, which wasn’t the usual part, but he was still fully dressed. You decided that you weren’t going till press it. He would tell you when he could.

Time skip~

You were sitting at the table rambling on about your day and your classes, your college books laid out in front of you. Tony had been holding your hand from across the table, eating and listening to you, looking at you intently with love.

“Are you okay, T?” You asked. Smiling as you brushed a piece of hair behind your ear.

“I love listening to you talk” he said and smiled softly. “I love the way your eyes light up when you talk about your profession and day at work. I love listening to you ramble on and on about stuff that I have no idea how you manage to study and retain all of it. I love how driven you are and how dedicated to being a pharmacist you are.” Tony spoke, almost poetically.

“Anthony” you say. “What happened today?”

“I saw someone that looked like you in a way I’d never want to see you and it scared me. It reminded me that my job is really dark, no matter how much I love my job. I love you so much.” He replied solemnly. “I was scared today, (y/n)”

“Im right here, okay baby?” You hold his hand tightly. “It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to worry, it’s okay and it’s going to be okay. I’m alive and here in front of you. In the flesh. You have a job that’s dark and scary, but you don’t ever have to worry about losing me, okay? I know “if it happens to anyone it can happen to you”, but here’s a secret” you say .

“Whats the secret?” He smirks gently.

“Im Anthony DiNozzos girlfriend you whisper in his ear. “Nothing can hurt me as long as Im with you” he smiles.

“Guess I gotta keep you forever” he kisses you.

“Yeah, forevaaass” you say dramatically before you kiss him back. You smiled at each other as you saw peace settle in his face. Relief falling in his eyes.

“I love you so much” he hugs you.

“I love you so much more than that”

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mysticmunson · 1 year

Note

imagine trying out that pheromone perfume on alpha steve…just to see if it’s legit and he comes home to you cooking or baking at the counter and his entire body is like ! where is my sweet angel princess omega!!! i need to touch her !

and he’s not sensing anything out of the ordinary esp since he’s missed you all day so he comes up behind you and wraps you in a hug, kissing against your cheek and jaw with a sweet “hi baby-” but as his lips meet your jaw he smells it (not knowing what it is but it changes his entire demeanor) he’s nuzzling into your neck, and rutting into your ass like “mmm baby you smell so fucking good. holy fuck.”

just grunting and groaning , sloppy kisses completely distracting you, and then he bends you over and ravishes you right on the kitchen counter🥰

oh this is beautiful, i’ve been having writers block so i apologize that this isn’t longer but i may come back to this bc… wow

Honestly, you thought it was a scam, something that people sell as gag gifts or well-intentioned hoaxes. But part of you hoped the pheromone perfume would work, not that your sex life with Steve had been anything except incredible since presenting together, rather out of curiosity.

With a dab to your neck, you faintly smelled something that felt reminiscent of the scent of need. Like going into a bakery and noting the aroma of pastries, unable to identify them specifically. Not precisely yours, but close.

So you grumbled over the waste of money, barely recalling it was there after a few minutes, and began cooking dinner. Steve had been working the closing shift, something Keith usually took, but it fell into your boyfriend's lap today.

The wooden door smacked against the frame as he entered, shoes coming off near the opening mat.

As it wore off on you, Steve noticed it instantly, the potent need filling his senses. Not recognizing the food you were prepping, he placed hands on your hips, pulling you close to him.

With your back against his chest, he nosed at your neck, growling so low that it sent vibrations down your spine.

“Smell so good, honey.” He manages to say, hands wandering across your midriff.

Feeling flushed, you wanted to remove your sweatshirt, but it seemed your alpha was a moment away from tearing it off.

“Thank you, Stevie, it’s your favorite pasta-“ You began, about to ask how his shift went until he grunted.

“Not what I’m talking about.” He stated, making you realize what the perfume was invoking in him as he adored your family recipe of tomato sauce.

Squeaking as he turned you around, kissing your neck feverishly, your own fingers going to his hair. He soon moved to your lips, enveloping yours with a hum, growing painfully aroused beneath his right jeans.

“Wait, Stevie-“ You laughed, his lips pulling away puffy and pink, his cheeks flushed red. You swiped the spit dripping onto his chin before grabbing the plate you had just made for him, “Need to eat first.”

“I don’t want to eat that right now,” He breathed with no malice or impatience. Setting the glassware on the counter, you grew embarrassed, making him furrow his brows.

“I bought this pheromone perfume, I thought it didn’t work.” You revealed, his interest peaking immediately as he went back to sniffing your neck, “Are you really getting-“

The answer to your inquiry came fast as he pulled your hand to the swelling beneath his jeans, a wonton gasp following.

“It doesn’t smell like you, but, shit, I need you. It’s like it’s making yours louder.” He groaned, impatient, he turned you around as your chest pressed onto the countertop.

“So needy,” You whisper, only getting a smack on the bottom, “Ow!”

“Watch it.” He scolded, though he could be further from irritated, too focused on the easiest way to remove your clothes without ripping them.

(He had ripped off your clothes twice before, fueled by the need to see you bare, which he earned complaints for. The agreement was that he could tear underwear, but he had to take you out to buy new ones afterward)

As if you could read his mind, some of his favorite words left your mouth, “You can rip them.”

Steve’s heart began racing, laughing against your neck, “Oh, you have no idea what you just did, honey.”

mutuals :) : @lilacletter @lesservillain @andvys @imjuststeddietrashatthispoint

#elora writes #steve harrington smut #steve harrington #steve harrington moodboard #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fanart #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x you #steve harrington stranger things #steve harrington fluff #alpha!steve harrington #alpha!steve harrington x omega!reader #a/b/o fanfic

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withacapitalp · 8 months

Text

Hurricane Joy

Written for the STWG Daily Prompt "applesauce". This is just a little snippet of a universe where Steve's parents left him with a little half sister, and he and Eddie are dancing around some feelingsssss

----------------

“Joy, I’ll pay you five bucks to eat. You want five bucks? You can do so many things with five bucks!”

“Careful there, Harrington. Don’t all those parenting books say bargaining with children develops bad habits?” Eddie asked as he entered the kitchen, finding Steve sitting in front of Joy with applesauce absolutely covering both of their faces.

“They’ve never had to take on Hurricane Joy and the applesauce of doom,” Steve groaned, pouting in Eddie’s direction as he walked further into the room, pausing to pat Steve on the back as he approached the two.

“So how is our baby bean today?” Eddie asked, pressing an exaggerated kiss to the top of Joy’s head and listening to her squeal in glee as he did.

Sure, she had been named after Joyce, but a part of Eddie was honestly convinced that Joy had heard her name once and then made it her mission to live up to it every single second of the day. Even her epic meltdown moments ended up being funny to watch.

“Well she’s happy as a clam, but breakfast has taken,” Steve paused to look at his watch, sighing and shaking his head when he saw the time, “Over an hour. Applesauce is my enemy, Eds, I swear to god it is.”

“Well maybe if you stop making faces at her it would go faster,” Eddie suggested, barely holding back his laughter as Steve gave him the world’s bitchiest look before turning back to Joy with renewed vigor.

“I’m not making faces,” Steve said, continuing to make weird faces at the baby as he tried and failed to spoon applesauce into her mouth. Joy cooed at her brother’s antics, smiling a bright gummy smile as the applesauce dribbled out of her mouth.

“C’mon, Joy, work with me,” Steve begged, holding out the spoon, “Don’t you love me? Don’t you want me to be happy?”

Joy burbled, grabbing at the spoon and trying to yank it out of Steve’s grip, flinging applesauce everywhere as she did. Eddie dodged the bit that had been heading for his hair, trying not to burst into laughter as he watched a glob land directly in the middle of Steve’s forehead.

“Maybe her favorite babysitter should give it a shot?” Eddie offered, trying to act like he wasn’t dying from laughter inside. Most of the time Steve took things fine, but Eddie knew there was a deeply hidden part of his best friend that took every single ‘failure’ as even more evidence he wasn’t cut out to raise his half-sister on his own.

“Her favorite babysitter is Wayne and you know it,” Steve said with a sigh, voluntarily releasing the spoon and walking over to the sink to wash himself off.

“Yes, but Wayne was the one who used to get me to eat when I was in silly moods too,” Eddie replied, unable to keep from changing his tone to complete babytalk as he sat in front of Joy. It was just impossible to not want to make those chubby cheeks turn up into a big grin, “Yes he was. I was a silly boy just like you’re a silly silly girl!”

Joy wiggled in her high chair, slapping her hands down on the tray table as she babbled.

“And how exactly did he do that?” Steve asked dryly, wiping his face on a clean washcloth and tossing it over his shoulder as he leaned against the sink.

“Usually with pliers and a crowbar,” Eddie immediately shot back.

He waited for a few seconds, watching Steve get paler and paler until he was forced to put the man out of his misery.

“Kidding! Geez, Stevie, lighten up.”

“Sorry I guess I’m just nervous,” Steve said, flapping a hand as he walked closer, reaching down with the washcloth to clean up Joy’s face, “Since it’s the first time…”

He trailed off with a sigh, avoiding eye contact with Eddie and focusing on Joy. Completely unaware, she looked up at her brother, sticking her tongue out and cackling to herself as she did.

She truly was the world’s cutest baby, but Eddie had someone equally cute he needed to focus his attention on.

“Everything’s fine now, I promise.” Eddie said, putting down the cup and spoon and coaxing Steve into a hug. He held Steve tight, feeling the other boy clinging on just as hard, burrowing his face into Eddie’s shoulder as he released the tension that had been holding him hostage since the moment Eddie walked in.

It made sense that Steve was so frazzled. This was the first time he was leaving Joy home without him.

“You’ll go to your shift, you’ll come home with a VHS, we’ll put the baby down, and we’ll celebrate, just you and me” Eddie said, laying the day out in easy to follow steps and hoping that would ease some of Steve’s anxiety, “Me and Joy will stay here the whole day. The only place we’ll go is in the backyard, and I’ll make sure she wears a jacket and shoes if we do,”

“Starting to sound pretty domestic there Munson,” Steve mumbled, but Eddie could hear the smile on his lips.

“I’m a regular Lucy Ricardo,” Eddie declared, pulling away from Steve and gently pushing him towards the door, “Now shoo. Go bring home the bacon, Big Daddy.”

Steve turned red in a second, even the tips of his ears burning a dusty rouge as he shoved Eddie away and spluttered for something to say. It was a lot harder for Steve to think of snappy comebacks now that he had implemented a no cursing rule in the house, and Eddie was planning on taking advantage of that in every way he could.

Joy was amazing for everything she did, even the unintentional things.

“I love you, baby. I’ll be home soon. You be a good girl for Eddie,” Steve crooned, giving Joy a thousand kisses before he turned to leave, pausing for a second before walking back over and pressing a firm kiss to Eddie’s cheek.

“Be home at five, Darling. You better have dinner in the oven and waiting,” Steve ordered, flashing Eddie a tricky little grin before he disappeared out the door. Eddie blinked rapidly at the air in front of him, as if he could will Steve back into existence so he could demand to know exactly what the fuck had just happened.

“Your brother’s trying to kill me, Joy.” Eddie moaned, hiding his face behind his hair as Joy continued to shout nonsense words in his direction

#steve harrington #stranger things #st #eddie munson #steddie ficlet #steddie #st drabble #steve and eddie #Joy Munson #stwgdailyprompt

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estrellami-1 · 8 months

Text

The Easiest Thing (I’ve Ever Done)

Had an idea. I don’t know if it’s anything, or if it makes any sense, but I like it. I hope y’all do too!

The camera’s shaky, moving from Eddie trying to place his phone down, making sure to keep his face in frame. “Baby,” he sings, looking off-camera. “Would you peel me an orange?”

A slight pause before, “Hypothetical or literal?”

Eddie blinks. “Uh. Literal?”

“How many do you want?”

Eddie gapes. “Just- just like that? No teasing? Nothing about me being capable? Nothing at all?”

“It’s an orange, babe. ‘S not like me carrying you out of-”

Eddie scrambles for his phone, and the video cuts off.

It picks up again later. They’re in the living room now, and Eddie’s filming Steve, who had just asked him a question. “Say it again.”

“Say-?”

“The question you just asked me. Ask me again.”

Steve gestures to the TV. “We just watched 50 First Dates, Eds, I don’t think it’s crazy of me to ask if you’d do that for me.”

“Stevie. Baby. Light of my life. Look me in my eyes and ask me again. But before you do, think about two years ago when you got a concussion and the resulting short-term amnesia.”

Steve closes his eyes and leans his head back with a groan. “I’m an idiot.”

“Are not,” Eddie says hotly, and the video cuts off again.

It picks up again later. It’s dark in the room, and Eddie’s got his finger to his lips, as if he’s telling the audience to be quiet. “Say that again, baby?”

Steve mumbles something unintelligible, then, “The elephant’s back.”

“Yeah? What’s it doing?”

The camera moves to focus on Steve’s face. He’s clearly still asleep, even as he frowns. “He’s proposing. ‘S my job.”

“Your job?”

“Mhm. ‘M gonna do it.” Another frown. “Screw you, elephant.”

The camera jumps to Eddie, who’s got a hand covering his mouth. The video cuts off again.

It picks up again later. Eddie’s in the same position as the first part of the video. There’s background sounds—rushing water and clanking porcelain—that means Steve’s washing dishes.

“I feel like you’re mad at me.”

The clanking stops. The water shuts off. “What?”

Eddie shrugs. “You’ve been kinda tense ever since I got home.”

“Baby,” Steve whispers. “No. No, I’m not mad at you. I’m so sorry I made you feel that way. I’ve just got a lot in my head right now.”

Eddie nods. “Can I help?”

Steve hums. “You can listen.”

Eddie smiles. “I can do that.”

“Okay, cool.” The water turns back on. “So I was talking to Robin earlier-”

The video cuts off again.

It picks up again later. They’re back on the couch, but this time Steve’s engrossed in a book, lips silently moving as he reads. “Baby.”

“Hm?”

“You mouth the words to yourself when you read.”

Steve flushes scarlet. “Shuddup.”

“No!” Eddie laughs. “No, I love it! It’s adorable!”

“You don’t.” He sniffs, but does nothing to hide the smile on his face. “It’s not.”

“It is,” Eddie argues back, camera jumping around as he shifts to sit up. “And I’ll prove it.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Uh. That part I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out!”

“Mhm.” Steve’s lips twitch up at the corners.

“I’m serious.”

“Mhm.”

“I love every part of you.”

Steve’s smile softens into something lovesick. “I know.”

“Especially the parts you don’t like.”

Steve groans and covers his face with the book, and Eddie chuckles as he turns the camera off.

The last time it picks up, Steve’s the one setting it up. “Babe?” He calls.

“Yeah?”

“Would you love me if I was a worm?”

“If you were a worm?”

“Yeah. Would you love me.”

Eddie walks into frame to grab Steve’s hands and hold them. “My darling,” he murmurs, “I fall more in love with you every day. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done and the easiest decision I’ll ever make. And I make it every day, I have for years now. If you were a worm, I’d build you the best little worm house. I’d do all the research and find out what you can eat, and I’d always have that. I’d learn to speak worm so I could talk to you.” He lifts one of Steve’s hands to his lips. “If you were a worm? Baby, I’d love you more than any worm’s ever been loved before.”

“Oh,” Steve squeaks.

Eddie presses a brief kiss to his lips before pulling away. “Why don’t you turn the camera off and come join me upstairs?”

Steve gapes even as he reaches for his phone. “You absolute asshole-”

“I meant every word, baby. Let me show you how much?”

Steve flounders, and the video cuts off for the last time.

Permanent Taglist: @justforthedead89 @ilovecupcakesandtea @madigoround @bookbinderbitch @suddenlyinlove @nburkhardt @artiststarme @paintsplatteredandimperfect @i-less-than-three-you @alyelf @quarble @messrs-weasley @littlewildflowerkitten @vankaar @starman-jpg @bornonthesavage @steddie-there @goodolefashionedloverboi @mischivarien @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @platinum-sunset @just-ladyme @steddiestains @swimmingbirdrunningrock @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @martinskis-lydias @notaqueenakhaleesi @sleepyboosstuff @bestwifehaver @m-owo-n @thatonebadideapanda @finalmoondragon @velocitytimes2 @callmeanythjing @ajeff855 @ilikeititspretty @knitsforthetrail @sillysparrow @that-one-corvid @ace-is-bored @inadequatecowboy @harpymoth @weirdandabsurd42

#stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #modern au #fluff #everything’s beautiful and nothing hurts #amen #is it at all obvious this is supposed to be a TikTok vid?#please keep in mind I am not Cool or Hip to today’s happenings #my younger brother explained ‘rizz’ to me and I had an actual physical reaction #literally how do I tag this #starambles

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morganbritton132 · 1 year

Note

It be so funny if they took Joan to soccer game and put her either in the team colour or a cheerleading outfit.

Great minds think alike because I was just thinking that we having checked in with Joan in a while so this problem is perfect.

Every Saturday for over a month now, Joan has watched the humans and Ozzy leave the house in the morning and come back hours later loud, smelly, and energized. She does not have a problem with this per se but if she had eyebrows, she’d raise one of them. She would raise the other when they’re all too tired to play with her for too long after they come back.

So, Joan makes a decision.

When the next Saturday rolls around and Steve is digging around in the drier for his jersey, she makes her case known. She whines. She meows. She gets in the way of every step. She commits a drive-by biting. She even gets in the storage closet in the hallway and knocks over the dreaded cat stroller so it falls into the hallway.

She makes it very clear. She wants to go.

Eddie coos at her, “Awe, baby, she feels left out. Let’s take her.”

“Ed, it’s hot outside,” Steve replies, gesturing to Joan. She rubs her head against his leg. “She’s gray.”

“Steve, don’t be racist.”

“I’m not being – how is that –“ Steve sputters and then rambles on about tiny bodies, and fur, and overheating in the sun, but Joan already knows she got her way. Steve can’t say no to Eddie and he can’t say no to her either. Plus, she always gets her way.

Her way is the right way.

Steve sighs and gives in, “But if she gets too hot, you have to take her home.”

As a reward for Steve and Eddie’s good decision-making, Joan helps them get ready to leave. She wiggles her way into the cabinet with the first-aid kit and pulls out bandaids. She leaves them inside Steve’s cleats. He says thank you when he finds them.

Ozzy huffs from where he’s laying in his dog bed.

Joan purrs when Steve pets her head.

Since Eddie disappeared down into his studio the moment Steve agreed to let her come, Joan continues ‘helping Steve.’ Mainly, she cleans up (eats) all the scraps of lunchmeat he drops when making sandwiches for him, Eddie, Robin, and Nancy.

Eddie immerges from the studio ten minutes before they’re supposed to leave with a hastily sewed shirt made for a cat. It’s made out of the soft material of the cheer squad t-shirts he made for the other team members’ partners. He presents it first to Steve and then holds it out to Joan like, “Ta-dah.”

Joan sniffs the fabric – it smells like Eddie – and Steve is just like, “Why did you make that?”

“Because Joan’s got to represent, Stevie. We’re a jock family now and jocks wear their team colors,” Eddie insists, grin getting bigger when Steve rolls his eyes at him. “Everybody else is wearing team colors. Even Ozzy. See.”

He gestures to the pin attached to his yellow service dog vest that says ‘#1 Steve Harrington Defender.’ It’s right next to a patch that says ‘If You Pet Me, You Are A Part Of The Problem’ which is… “That’s new.”

“Yeah, I’m solving all the world’s problems today, baby,” He grins. “Isn’t that right, Joan?”

She hisses at the shirt.

#Its always fun to write from Joan’s perspective #also I just love the idea of Ozzy being annoyed by Steve thinking her for helping when she’s not actually helping. He helps. All the time.#Joan’s just like: it’s fine if you go out but you better have enough energy to play with me when you come back #eddie munson tiktok saga #steve harrington #eddie munson #Joan the disservice cat #Ozzy the service dog

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hotluncheddie · 3 months

Text

ur my burger king

written for the June @steddiemicrofic prompt 'stuff' !

wc: 483 | rated: M | cw: weed | tags: idiot4idiot, Chubby Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson is a sweetheart

🍔 ✧

‘Five whoppers.’ Eddie says, with an air of gravitas. ‘And then, five more whoppers.’ Flicking his wrist at the little drive-thru speaker.

Steve giggles in the passenger seat, his little cardboard crown shifting as he turns to grin at Eddie.

‘Do you require anything else my liege?’ Eddie’s ears stick out between strands of hair, his own crown sitting so low Steve can’t see his eyebrows.

‘Dr Pepper?’

‘But of course!’ Eddie gasps. ‘And two of your finest Dr Peppers, if you would!’

‘…Next window.’ the workers bored, tinny voice replies.

Eddie pays and drives them over to the deserted end of the parking lot. Both moving to the back to get comfy and smoke, September sun beginning to set, lighting everything up golden.

By the time the munchies are in full swing and Eddie’s eyes are rimmed red, Steve, slouched heavily against the vans side, sighs. ‘I miss Bobbie.’ He pouts.

‘Ah Stevie, I know you do, but you’ll see her soon. Winter road trip, remember?’ Eddie swings his arms around, holding fries as if they’re pompoms.

‘Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to ruin the high.’ Steve smiles a little sheepishly. ‘I’m, thanks for uh, all this.’ Steve finishes the last of his burger and looks at Eddie, his hair curling around his cheeks, soft smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Eddie winks, crawling to change the tape.

Steve shifts, placing a hand on his food baby, that’s pushing slightly against his polo. ‘Oof, I am stuffed.’ He sighs.

‘Yeah.’ Eddie sits back down, eyes his chubbier middle, lighting a fresh joint. ‘Is it like, a feelings thing? You okay?’ He asks, leaning closer. Their shoulders brush and Eddie’s eyes are so big, and kind. He holds the joint up to Steve’s mouth for him, everything fizzes where they touch, everything warm, and electric.

‘Nah.’ Steve exhales, waving his hand uselessly against the thick mist that fills the space. ‘It’s just, sometimes if I eat a lot my dick gets hard.’ He shrugs, not really thinking.

Eddie stares at him, mouth a little open.

Steve pauses, the hand on his belly feels heavier. ’I, uh. Shit dude, I, think I’m really high.’

But Eddie’s mouth splits into a surprised grin, face and body collapsing into fond laughter, which turns into uncontrollable hysteria.

He tips forward until his forehead rests on Steve’s thigh. Steve slouching even further against the vans interior, but that squishes his packed stomach. Which makes him groan, and makes them both double over with even more giggly laughter.

Steve shifts until he’s laying prone, no longer inclined to move, the weed hitting his limbs. Eddie wiggles next to him.

‘That uh, honestly?’ Eddie says through a final giggle, leaning up on his elbow, wiping a tear from his eye and looming over Steve. ‘That sounds kinda hot.’

‘Yeah?’ Steve asks, grinning as Eddie nods ‘Wanna, make out?’

‘Fuck yeah.’

🍔 ✧

context

Tag list (open) : @pearynice @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @scoops-aboy86 @chickensinrainboots @cheesedoctor

@marvel-ous-m @tangerinesteve

#are they dating?? they don't even know #this is so dumb im so sorry #xoxo #hotlunch #steddie #steddie fanfiction #steve x eddie #steddiemicrofic #steddiemicroficjune #chubby steve harrington #this is like the most roundabout way to mention a stuffing kink #but Steve has a stuffing kink lol #and also theyre dumb and in love

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lavendermunson · 10 months

Text

gifts - steve harrington

day 6 of leia's christmas tree farm

cw mentions of pregnancy. established relationship. future dad!steve and mom!reader. fluff fluff fluff. allusions to sex.

Waking up on Christmas morning is always one of your favorite feelings. Waking up beside the boy you love so much is the best gift you could ever ask for, and today, you have a gift for him that is going to change your lives forever.

You glance at Steve, hearing his quiet and adorable snores. You climb on top of him under the sheets, straddling his hips and kissing his face to wake him up.

His eyes open slowly as they adjust to the light that comes from the window, watching as the girl of his dreams kisses him. He is never going to get tired of this.

“Good morning, baby” you whisper between pecks, your words tingling against his skin. Your fingers rub soft circles on his biceps.

“Good morning my love”

“My love? That’s new!”

“I know, but you are my love” He places his hands on your waist, squeezing gently at your flesh as he finds your face. Steve smiles when he places a hand on your cheek, caressing as his lips brush against yours.

He kisses you extra soft today, enjoying the way your soft lips brush against his.

You break the kiss and gasp for air, excited for the day that’s ahead of you.

“I have something very special for you today” you confess, as Steve’s brows lift up and he smiles.

“I have something for you too, can we have breakfast first?”

“Yes! What about some hot cocoa and the cookies Robin bought for us?”

“I was talking about another type of breakfast” He gets up easily, sitting down on the bed and kissing your lips when his chest bumps against yours.

“Baby” your lips press for a pout, watching as his sleepy grin shows on his face. “You might want to eat some breakfast first, I know you are hangover”

He laughs, wrapping his arms around your body to keep you close.

“You are right” he nudges the tip of your nose against yours “It’s too bad you had a headache, that wine was delicious”

“I can imagine, but you know I was scared that my headache would ruin the night”

“I know my love. Let’s have some breakfast then”

After making hot cocoa, add a lot of marshmallows to it and place the cookies in the center of the table. Steve decided it was better for you to sit on his lap, eating together as you laughed and talked about the night before. You two spent Christmas at Nancy and Jonathan’s new apartment, with Robin, Eddie, and the kids. They were your family and each Christmas gets better because you love them so much.

“I guess it’s time, don’t move! I’m going to get your gift!”

“Hey! I need to get yours too. Meet me here after you find it”

And just the little kids you were once, you run all over the place to find the gifts for each other. When you get back, Steve leads you to the couch. You sit just right next to him, the smell of pine from the tree and the burnt wood from the chimney makes the butterflies on your stomach fluttering.

“This is mine,” Steve says, kneeling before you as he feels the carpet under him. Retrieving a small velvet box from his pocket. “My love. We’ve grown up together, and since we were little I knew my heart was yours. I remember one time I asked you to marry me and you said ‘We are ten years old, ask me again in a few years’ and since then I've been thinking about it. I want to spend every summer with you, tell you all my dirty jokes, and save you a seat beside me at every table. You are my biggest treasure, the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and the girl of my dreams” He opens the box, and its content shines as your glassy eyes finally let the tears roll down your face. “Would you make me the happiest, luckiest man on earth and marry me?”

“Yes! Yes Stevie, my baby” You jump up, nodding as fast as you can. Steve places the ring on your finger, a promise of a lifetime together with all the love he can give you and all the admiration he has for you. He gets up and kisses you, holding your ringed hand against his chest, against his heart. He kisses you slowly as he always does, holding you close to him as his lips brush against yours. His heart pounding so fast against his chest that you can feel the beats underneath your fingertips.

“I love you” he whispers against your lips, wiping the tears off your cheeks gently with his thumbs.

“I love you,” you say, wrapping your hands around his neck and getting him closer to leave a soft peck on his lips. “My turn!”

You turn around, and the box you have is bigger than his. You place it on his hands and he hesitates to open it, shaking it close to his ear to try and guess what’s on the box.

“Honey, if you get me another clock I'm calling it. You are the worst gift giver ever”

“That was one time! Please just open it, you are going to love it!”

He smiles, his fingers tremble slightly as he opens the box. His eyes glow as he glances at the contents of it. A mix of emotions comes to Steve in waves, first is shock, then fear but at the end is pure love.

“We are pregnant!” he takes the positive pregnancy test between his fingers, looking at you with shimmery eyes. “I’m going to be a dad!” He lifts the baby onesie that reads I have the best dad ever and drops the box so he can hug you. He spins around, while you wrap your legs around his waist and hold him close.

“Baby! Baby stop” you giggle, noticing Steve’s excitement.

“This is the best gift ever! You make all my dreams come true and I love you, I love you” he slurs, his breath hitching in his throat as he fights to not spill any tears but

it’s too late. He feels so much joy, so much love.

“Just like the gift says, you are going to be the best dad ever, baby. I love you”

You kiss him again, trying to get another soft kiss from him but he breaks away from you.

“Does that mean I can't get my favorite breakfast anymore?”

“Is that what you are really worried about?”

He shakes his head, but you know he is just hiding it. He has too many things to worry about, but having sex with you is one of his priorities.

“You can, we just have to be more careful”

“That I can do! I’m the luckiest man ever!”

He runs towards your shared bedroom with you in his arms, as you giggle against his neck. You get so happy to see him smile, to see him as excited as he is now. Knowing your family is only going to get bigger from now on.

reblog to support your creators! comments are appreciated !! ♡ thank you for following my christmas event, remember you can still request a gift!

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xoxoladyaz · 1 year

Text

You're My Heaven, Angel (Paramedic Steve x Rockstar Eddie) - Part 2

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 (Coming Soon)

AN: I just wanted to say a quick THANK YOU to everyone who has been so kind and so supportive of Part 1! I hear you and I, too, want to create a whole series based around this idea. It's a lot of pressure following-up something that's so beloved, but I'm going to give it my best!

Robin must secretly hate Steve.

She must be the most incredible actress in the entire world. She must be the most prolific conman that’s in the business of conman-ing people or whatever. She must have made a blood oath with an elder god during a full moon that no matter how many days or weeks or months or years it took, she would one day make Steve Harrington’s life absolutely miserable. There’s no other reasonable explanation for why she insists on taking the scenic route to Eddie’s room - a scenic route which adds on two additional minutes of travel time instead of heading straight down the hallway (which maybe adds forty seconds tops).

A route which means Steve has to bear two additional minutes of Eddie loudly introducing him to every single doctor, nurse, patient or family member that they come across on the way to his suite. Never mind that Steve’s worked with most of these doctors and nurses for years now, never mind that he actually goes to Sharla’s poker group when he has Thursdays off with the other fifty-something moms on staff (which Robin never ceases to find absolutely hilarious); no, Eddie is all smiles and arm flourishes, loudly – too loudly – proclaiming that they are now in the presence of his angel, his baby, his angel baby, the love of his life, the apple of his eye, his amor, his partner, his husband –

“Congratulations, Steve! I didn’t know you got married!” Sue laughs as the entire production passes by.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve rolls his eyes. Eddie blows her a noisy kiss before clearing his throat. He takes a deep breath, and –

“I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING - ”

“Robin, he’s singing again!”

“I know, dingus, I can hear him.”

“DING DONG, THE BELLS ARE GONNA CHIIIIIMMMEEEEEEEE - ”

Steve turns back, risking a glare at Robin mid-step. “Remind me why we’re going the long way around?”

Robin snorts out a laugh, shit-eating grin firmly in place. “Come on, Stevie, we all need the exercise.”

“ – GET ME TO THE CHURCH ON TIMMMMMEEEE – Stevie? Stevie,” Eddie turns and sighs at Steve and okay, Steve can’t tell if Eddie’s eyes are super dilated because of the probable head trauma or if there’s a weird reflection from the fluorescents, but his eyes are, like, legit sparkling up at him. “Steeeeeevieeeee - ”

“Yep, I’m still here.” Eddie grins, flopping to the side so that their joined hands are resting up against his head. He sighs happily, his feet wiggling under the shock blanket, and it’s not cute Steve stop thinking it’s cute –

“Steve!” He pulls his eyes away just as the gurney comes to a stop in front of Brenda, one of the intake nurses currently on shift. Brenda’s blonde and cute and ethically non-monogamous, but Steve is more of a one and done sort of guy. That doesn’t mean they don’t flirt like crazy anytime they bump into each other, though. (Hey, he’s gotta stay in shape somehow.)

“Looking good today. Is that a new shirt?” She asks with a smirk, her eyes running over his biceps. (It’s not a new shirt, Robin just ran it through the dryer, so it shrunk. Really, he should have gotten rid of it, but it makes his biceps look amazing.)

“Nah, it’s - ”

He has a line. He has a great line. But as soon as he opens his mouth to speak it, he’s cut off by a very loud hissing sound coming from his left and –

Yep, it’s Eddie. Eddie, who’s glaring at Brenda like they’re mortal enemies. Seriously, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have laser eyes like that one superhero guy because if he did, Brenda would be at risk of getting too tan.

“MINE!” Eddie snaps at the end of his hiss and then, all while still maintaining eye contact with Brenda, he yanks Steve’s hand to his mouth and licks it. And not, like, a gentle lick that you’d get from a puppy. No, Eddie licks his hand like he’s trying to give Steve a tongue bath.

(His first instinct should be to pull away, but instead all Steve can think about it Eddie giving him an actual full body tongue bath - )

“Dude!” Steve exclaims when he does finally pull his hand away. (He hears Robin snort under her breath, clearly having caught onto the fact that his brain broke at the whole licking thing and shit, now he’s thinking about it again - )

“No, MINE!” Eddie growls, and Steve barely has a chance to wipe his hand on his pants before Eddie is grabbing it back, clutching it between both of his hands like it’s his special or something. (Special, was that the word that the guy used? The little creepy guy in that one movie? He needs to text Dustin and ask.)

“Aww, I’m glad to see you’ve finally met someone!” Brenda teases.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve replies distractedly, trying (and failing) to shake one of Eddie’s hands off of his hand because now that they’re actually at his suite, he’s going to need them. “Brenda, this is - ”

“The concussion patient from Lollapalooza, Sarah clued me in,” Brenda says, snapping her gum. “Eddie, right?”

Eddie pauses from wrestling with Steve to sniff at Brenda and honestly, as someone who spent way too much time at country clubs as a child because of his parents, Eddie has the whole I’m-better-than-you-you-poor-person-wearing-Adidas expression locked down. “That’s Mister Eddie to you, Briony.”

Briony? “Who’s Briony?”

Robin kicks the gurney forward with an eye roll and suddenly they’re moving into the suite. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, dingus.”

Eddie finally manages to tear his eyes away from Brenda. He perks his head up at Steve and once Steve’s face is in his line of sight his expression softens, the sparkles coming back in full force. “And it’s such a pretty head, baby.”

Such a pretty head SUCH A PRETTY HEAD –

“I’ll show you – ow, Robin, seriously?” Steve yelps at Robin’s pinch.

“Stop being horny and help me get him on the bed.”

“I’m - ”

“Don’t listen to her baby, please, please stay horny, and lose the shirt while you’re at it!” Eddie sits up and starts frantically grasping at Steve’s sleeves. “Christ almighty, these arms, arms of heaven, arms of an angel - ”

“Steve!” Robin barks and shit, he needs to focus. He takes advantage of the fact that Eddie let go of his hand to grab at his shirt and darts down to the other end of the gurney. They lift on a count of three, placing Eddie onto the bed and kicking the wheeled cart out of the way. (Eddie makes a loud WHEEEEEEEEE sound and then immediately goes back to demanding that Steve get naked.) Sarah, who’s followed the procession the entire time, grabs the empty cart and wheels it out of the room just as Brenda steps in.

“Well then, Eddie, let’s get started on intake,” Brenda nods, bringing out her iPad. “Are you ready to answer a few questions?”

“No.”

Robin groans and steps to the side, energetically fluffing and reorganizing Eddie’s pillows so he’s seated up. Somehow Eddie is able to lean around Robin’s wide-armed movements and fix Brenda with yet another piercing glare.

Brenda shoots Steve a look before nodding her head at Eddie.

Right.

“Hey, uh, Eddie, we really need to ask you a few questions - ”

“Hand!” Eddie snaps to look at Steve and sticks his hand towards him. He wiggles his fingers a few times before making a grabby motion. “Hand!”

It’s not cute. It’s totally not cute.

Steve sighs but walks back around from the foot of the bed and places his hand gently in Eddie’s. Eddie links their fingers and squeezes tightly. “Uh, how about now, is now okay to ask a few questions?”

Huffing, Eddie looks at their fingers for a few moments before looking upwards at Steve. Their eyes meet and he grins. “Hi angel,” he lets out a pleased sigh. “I missed you.”

Don’t say it don’t say it DON’T SAY IT -

“I missed you too, Eds.”

FUCK.

“Awwwww, my little schmoopers are being all schmoopy-moopy!” Robin sings in her best baby voice. (That’s it, he’s eating the rest of the Chunky Monkey.)

“I’m eating the rest of the Chunky Monkey.”

“Uh, like fuck you are.”

“I'd rather have you eat me,” he hears Eddie whisper and yeah, okay, that’s one he’s just going to choose to ignore for the sake of what little sanity he has left.

“Right, okay,” he hears Brenda try to get things back on track. “About those intake questions - ”

“Oh, don’t worry Nurse Brenda,” the lilting voice of Dr. Suzie Henderson floats into the room. “I can take it from here.”

Steve turns just in time to see Suzie strut into the emergency suite. She shoots Brenda a grateful nod and Brenda, with one last wink to Steve, hands her iPad off to Suzie and heads out of the room.

“Bye Steve!”

“Bye Brenda.”

“Yeah, bye Brittany!”

Suzie has the best laugh in the world, and she lets it fly on her walk over. “Hey Steve,” Suzie grins at him as she makes her way towards the foot of Eddie’s bed. “How are things going today?”

“Oh, good,” Steve replies quickly before turning to look at Eddie. “Eddie, this is Doctor Suzie Henderson, she’s my sister-in-law.”

Eddie slowly scooches his butt backwards so he’s sitting up more. “No, she’s our sister-in-law,” he huffs before turning and smiling at Suzie. “Hey sis!”

“And you must be Eddie! I heard you were thinking about marrying into the family.” She lets out a quick giggle at those words but then clears her throat and throws her shoulders back. “Well, if you are serious about joining our Steve in holy – or unholy – matrimony - ”

“Fuck yeah,” he hears Eddie whisper.

“ – then I’m going to need you to answer a few questions.”

“Proceed, milady.” Eddie starts gently caressing Steve’s hand with his fingers. Steve shoots a look at Robin, who makes exaggeratedly sappy faces while glancing between Steve and their intertwined fingers.

(Forget the Chunky Monkey, he’s eating all of the ice cream they have left tonight.)

“Full name?”

“Edward Anthony Munson.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Name of your emergency contact?”

“Oh, that would be Uncle Wayne and Chrissy! Baby, you’re going to love Wayne,” Eddie says, turning to gaze lovingly up at Steve. “And he’s going to love you! Not as much as I love you though, that’s impossible.”

(Steve’s pretty sure that Bambi eyes here is the impossible one.)

“Great, is Wayne and Chrissy’s contact information in your medical file?”

“Uh huh,” Eddie replies dreamily, still gazing at Steve.

“Okay, speaking of your file,” Suzie taps at her iPad, “any major events in your medical history that we should know about?”

“Hmmm?”

He can feel it on his face, he can feel his stupid grin on his stupid face, but he chooses to instead focus on helping Eddie pay attention. “She wants to know if there’s major health events in your past that we need to know about, Bambi.”

“Bambi?”

“BAMBI?!” Robin squeaks after Eddie.

Shit shit SHIT -

“I mean - ”

“Bambi,” Eddie hums, blinking rapidly as he slumps back against his pillows. Once he's settled, he tosses his free hand across his forehead and moans happily. “He loves me. He loves me, he loves me, HE LOVES MEEEEEE - ”

Don’t blush DO NOT BLUSH BODY STOP BLUSHING

“Oh my god that was amazing, I have literally never seen you this red, you look like an actual tomato. Oh my god, I have to tell Nance, like, now.”

“Right, yes, okay Bambi,” Suzie interrupts with a snicker, “like Steve said, is there anything we need to know?”

“Well, we’re in love,” Eddie sighs, pressing a quick kiss to the top of Stevie’s hand. “I think I’m still a little high but it’s only weed, I’ve definitely stopped doing cocaine since, like, five months ago. No need to worry about that, angel,” Eddie pats the top of Steve’s hand.

“Yeah, no, I definitely won’t worry about that.” (He’s definitely going to worry about that.)

“Well, thank you for your honesty, Eddie. I’m going to take a closer look at your files once we get them just to get a better picture of your overall health before we run our tests. Now, second set of questions,” Suzie loudly taps and drags a new window on her tablet open. “What is your annual income?”

(Huh. That’s weird. Steve’s doesn't think he's ever heard any of the nurses ask that question before.)

Eddie snorts out a laugh. “God, I make so much money. A fucking stupid amount of money.”

“You have something in way of a retirement plan then?”

“Doc, I could retire for, like, the next five hundred million years.”

Susie hums as she makes a note. “Do you have anything against sharing resources with your romantic partner?”

(Okay, Steve definitely hasn't heard anyone else ask these questions before.)

“Nah!” Eddie scoffs before gently tugging on Steve’s hand to get his attention. “You’ll be the hottest trophy wife, babe. Do you have an apron? I’m going to buy you an apron.”

“And what are your feelings on children?”

“Kids? I love kids. Is he good with kids? I bet he’s good with kids,” Eddie rushes out. “Fuck, you’re going to look so hot pregnant, baby.”

Robin makes a loud barfing noise which Suzie naturally ignores. “What exactly are you looking for in a relationship?”

“Suzie - ”

“Him! My angel,” Eddie slumps to the side so he’s leaning up against Steve’s hip. “I want to wrap him up in a warm towel and keep him forever and make sweet, sweet love to him under the - ”

“OKAY, next question please,” Robin loudly cuts him off.

“So what you’re saying is you’re looking for a committed relationship with Steve,” Suzie ignores Robin's dramatics. “Are you prepared for lifelong monogamy?”

“Absolutely.”

“Suz - ”

“And you’ll work every day to be deserving of Steve?”

“For the rest of my life,” Eddie proclaims and fuck, he actually sounds serious. He actually looks serious too.

Huh.

Suzie quietly observes him for a moment before her face relaxes into a warm smile. “I believe you. Now, dealbreakers. What are your opinions on outdoor weddings? Steve gets scared in churches.”

“What?!” Eddie gasps, snapping back to Steve.

“SUZ – what, no, I’m not afraid of churches - ”

“Uh yeah you are, you said that every time you visit one you get nightmares about being sacrificed on an altar,” Robin chimes in.

“Gee, thanks, Robin.”

“Baby, baby, don’t worry, I’d never let them sacrifice you,” Eddie tries to comfort Steve, but everything that’s happened in the last thirty seconds – hell, the last thirty minutes – is starting to finally sink in and yeah, okay, there’s an obscenely hot and rich and famous rockstar telling Steve that he loves him and sure, he’s partially concussed but the joke isn’t ending, he’s acting like he’s serious and they’ve only exchanged like maybe twenty words total but he’s acting like this is actually happening and what if it actually could –

“Shoot, we’re going to have to wrap it up here, loverboy,” Robin waylays his runaway thoughts as her beeper goes off. “We’ve got a fainter with a broken nose."

“Okay, okay.” Steve shakes his head and tries to gently extract his hand from Eddie’s grasp but Eddie lurches at the feeling of Steve moving his hands and whines, digging his finger into Steve’s hand.

“Eddie, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get back to work.”

“But – no, angel, please,” he blubbers before turning his eyes on Steve and –

Oh.

Oh no.

They’re even bigger and shinier when he’s crying.

“I’m sorry, Bambi,” he replies totally deliberately, “but I’ve got to go finish my shift. I’ll come back when I’m done, okay?”

Eddie sniffles, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay,” he whimpers sadly, and – look, this joke isn't really joking anymore so if Eddie's gonna go all the way, he might as well go all the way too.

He leans forward and presses a quick kiss to the top of Eddie’s head. “Be good for Suzie, okay?” As he draws back, he glances back down at Eddie. Eddie is blinking dazedly at Steve, all glassy-eyed and rosy.

“Wow,” Eddie whispers, and while the smile that appears on his face is small, it’s the warmest one Steve has seen yet. “Whatever you say, baby.”

“Right, right.” Steve nods and then pivots, making a hasty retreat out of the room.

“Later, Bambi,” Robin sings behind him, and then she’s quick on Steve’s heels. The hall’s crowded, though, so they aren’t fast enough to escape the start of Suzie and Eddie’s conversation.

(“So, outdoor wedding? Maybe in spring?”

“Can it be in Hobbiton?”

“Uh, it better be in Hobbiton!”)

“I’m kinda surprised to see you staking your claim already, dingus,” Robin says, thrusting the portable gurney mat into Steve’s arms as they walk. “I was worried I’d have to make you.”

“I shouldn't have done that. I mean, he’s a patient, Robin!”

“Not anymore, he’s not!” Robin gently bumps his hip. “He's not your patient anymore so now we need to start planning your next move. I mean, he’s obviously going to say yes when you ask him out, but it still needs to be smooth.”

“What – I’m Steve Harrington, I’m always smooth.”

Robin is purposely silent.

“Okay, first of all, rude,” he says after giving her plenty of time to politely agree. “Second of all, even if I did decide to make a move, there actually isn’t a guarantee he’d say yes. Even if he wasn't just doing this because he's heavily concussed, I’ve hardly talked to the guy!”

“I know, he has no idea how much of a dork you are, it’s great.”

Steve offers Robin a hand as he climbs into the ambulance. (Not without shooting her a look once they're both seated, of course because again, rude.)

Robin shrugs Steve's frown off. “Look, dingus, I know you think that you have all these great lines or whatever - ”

“Uh, I don’t think, I do have them - ”

“ – but they’re, like, obviously lines. Whatever you say to him has to be more real. He needs to know that if he says yes, he’s going to be going on a date with a guy that has the ooiest, gooiest, squishiest little itty bitty heart!” She squeezes her hands together like she’s holding Steve’s heart in her hands (which definitely isn’t concerning given the fact that she’s technically a medical professional who knows just how vulnerable that particular organ is.)

“Robs - ”

“ITTY BITTY!” She kisses the tips of her fingers. “And that’s why we gotta plan, doinkus. Edward Anthony Munson needs to be constantly conscious of the fact that he’s dating the best guy on the entire planet because you are, Steve, you are the best guy on Earth and you deserve a Prince Charming even though the Prince Charming archetype is totally outdated and part of a patriarchal initiative to establish systematic gender dynamics - ”

Well, shucks. Maybe Robin doesn’t hate him after all.

“ - doesn't exist, its still what you deserve. But more importantly than that, if Eddie does start dating you, then I have a better shot of getting him to introduce me to Chris Hemsworth.”

“Chris Hemsworth?"

“Uh, yeah.”

"Chris Hemsworth - Chris Hemsworth? Out of every famous person Eddie could hypothetically introduce you to, you'd want to meet Chris Hemsworth?"

"Well, yeah," Robin takes a brief sip of her water before shooting Steve a playful smirk. “I mean, as great as you are, I wouldn't be opposed to upgrading my emotional support himbo.”

Never mind, she’s evil incarnate.

(And she’s going to be out of Chunky Monkey in about five hours.)

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#it's me I'm the girl who fainted and broke her nose at work #I told the doctor hey at least I've finally broken a bone and he said it didn't count #which is honestly super rude so fuck you doctor jones #anyways #steddie #Steve harrington #Eddie munson #steddie fic #paramedic Steve harrington #rock star Eddie munson #yes Eddie knows my fair lady #Steve forgetting both Superman and Gollum #trigger warning: brenda #also I took a weed hard candy while I wrote this so if the grammar is weird whoopsie I'll fix it later #Chris Hemsworth is for the lesbians

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