#hitlikehammers vs words

[hitlikehammers]

lotus-blossom🪷

@steddiemicrofic prompt: hole | wc: 404 | explicit |

read on ao3

this one goes under the cut because it's obliquely inspired by a conversation from Zack and Miri Make a Porno so you can use your imaginatons (but that also means it's weirdly romantic porn, so also that)

CW: rimming, light/implied felching, dirty talk

Eddie doesn't cry during sex, okay?

So chalk this shit up to more things shot to hell because of Steve motherfucking Harrington.

“You eat like it’s a fucking feast,” Eddie's voice trembles as he arches into Steve's lips dragging the cleft of his ass, and yeah: Eddie's face is wet.

It's just so much.

“You say that like it’s not."

Which: no, it fucking isn't, but Steve—

"You, it's like, you make the whole thing feel,” Eddie tries to swallow, but Steve's mouth, so it comes out strangled as shit: “beautiful."

Ab-fucking-surd.

“You say that,” Steve pops up from between Eddie's thighs: "like it’s not."

“Steve."

“It’s you,” is the simple answer shrugged; “you’re beautiful, so all of you is beautiful,” and Jesus, Eddie’s heart skips whole-ass-sideways when Steve kisses the furl of him, almost delicate.

“It’s literally where I shit."

“It’s clean,” not even a protest, Eddie can’t follow it up, then Steve’s back to that dizzy-swirl with his tongue, texture a glorious tease.

“You suck my dick and that’s where I piss."

“Not the same,” Eddie hisses when Steve exhales on the wet-stretched gape between cheeks he’s holding spread-wide.

“Flowers can grow in shit,” Steve counters, pursing his lips undeterred and good-fucking-god, there’s still spunk in Eddie’s ass and here’s Steve, sucking him like a slurpee for whatever’s left.

“You calling my asshole a flower?” Eddie could pretend his voice doesn’t squeak like he’s twelve. But.

“Y'know, big-petals, like, peace, calm—"

“You calling my asshole a lotus? Specifically?”

Steve hums, and holy fuck: this man.

“One guy literally called it a cumdumpster,” Eddie moans as Steve starts licking, lapping warm along his walls.

“I mean, rude, but accurate," he pulls back, kissing the puffy rim; Eddie's whimpers for the loss.

“He didn't even come in me.”

“So, just rude."

Eddie yelps when Steve darts his whole tongue deep, just a second before drawing out entirely to speak:

“Jizz has nutrients."

It…

“What?”

“Old hookup—"

“No exes-talk in bed."

“Not that serious,” Steve's eyeroll is audible, and fuck Eddie loves his bitchy boy so much; “but she was always saying how swallowing got you, like, potassium and shit," and this fucker's nipping at the crease above the hole, then below, and—

“Flowers need nutrients,” and fucking…he's still going on about flowers and Eddie's asshole isn't he, that is—

“So, either way,” and Eddie feels every syllable drag against over-senstive nerves, good-fucking-god:

“Goddamn gorgeous."

[ao3feed-stucky]

by hitlikehammers

Bucky figures he's dreaming Steve's trial-runs at declaring his love in the night when he thinks Bucky's asleep.

It is entirely possible that they're both very much mistaken.

Words: 3489, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

Additional Tags: Love Confessions, Dreams vs. Reality, (But in the best way), Modern Bucky Barnes, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Shrunkyclunks, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, They're So In Love It's Absurd, Schmoop

[ao3feed-stevebucky]

mistaking your somniloquy

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2xoe4hK

by hitlikehammers

Bucky figures he's dreaming Steve's trial-runs at declaring his love in the night when he thinks Bucky's asleep.

It is entirely possible that they're both very much mistaken.

Words: 3489, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

Additional Tags: Love Confessions, Dreams vs. Reality, (But in the best way), Modern Bucky Barnes, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Shrunkyclunks, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, They're So In Love It's Absurd, Schmoop

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2xoe4hK

[ao3feed-buckybarnes]

find the sound

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3B2t3Ji

by hitlikehammers

His mistake, in making the last jump, is probably a lack of conviction. Lack of decision, of certainty. He knows at least the outline of the consequences—clip all the branches—and he’d promised, or else, implied he’d uphold the gravity of the thing. The significance.

He never said he wouldn’t make new branches. He never said.

He’s not sure if he knew he was lying, at the time. He’s not sure if lying by omission counts, if he believes that it counts, and if he does, he’s not sure if that’s new. For him. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, either; isn’t absolutely sure what he was aiming for. Just that this?

This isn’t it at all.

“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”

Steve spins on his heel, weight immediately poised for a fight. But then he realizes the voice came from the ground, where a man sits, an unnatural shade of violet pooled around him, with the whittled core of an apple in his hand.

   Or: Steve Rogers' final leap through time runs afoul of the very end of exactly that—time. Pesky thing that it is.

Words: 3885, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America (Movies), Loki (TV 2021), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen, M/M

Characters: Steve Rogers, He Who Remains (Loki TV), James “Bucky” Barnes

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

Additional Tags: The Citadel At The End of Time, He Whom Remains' Monologuing vs Steve Rogers' Self-Righteousness—FIGHT, (It's Not A Fight), Unexpected Side Effects of the Supersoldier Serum, Meddling Infinity Stones, Character Study, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Home (It's Where The Heart Is)

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3B2t3Ji

[hitlikehammers]

“Make Him Pay” (but Steve turns back—)

They don’t really have the time to spare.

Actually no, shit: they do not have the time to spare.

But god, just, fuck it: he turns back anyway.

Because the pit in Steve’s stomach, more vicious and clawing and rabid than the fucking bats; the assault of his own heartbeat on the line of his throat, strangling him worse than those goddamn vines—he’s never felt these things. He’s never known he could hurt this way. And Jesus Christ, has Steve hurt before, so many times; in so many ways.

None of them wrecked him quite like this.

And maybe he doesn’t know exactly why. The specifics. Or maybe he knows, and just can’t say it. Like he can’t wrap his head around the whole of it just yet. Or like the onslaught on his pulse against his windpipe isn’t just choking him out against the idea of air in his lungs, but words from his mouth, too.

Like maybe it’s a moot point either way. Saying it.

But he barely even hears Robin’s confused little squeak, or Nancy’s harsh call of his name. The blood rushes too fast behind his eardrums even if he was listening for them; even if he cared right then and there.

Steve doesn’t think as he grabs Eddie by the sleeve and drags him far enough away from Henderson that he won’t be heard. He doesn’t plan to do it, doesn’t strategize with that end in mind. His limbs, his bones, the fucking marrow in the middle: they just know.

They might have the words, already. They might better grasp the truth of it at the heart.

Steve’s heart is downright shaking, which is a strange and honestly godawful experience. He lets it happen, though, so long as his grip stays steady in exchange.

He doesn’t look to check, though; just white-knuckles the heft of the leather and holds Eddie’s eyes like losing them would break the whole goddamn world.

Fuck, but that’s…that’s—

Fuck.

“Understand me, Munson,” Steve hisses out low, and it sounds dangerous, and he wonders in the back corner of his brain whether Eddie knows it is, it is dangerous and it’s not any less so just because that’s the loudest he can make the sound come out at all, with his pulse trembling like it wants to punch out his windpipe.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” Steve bites out, and that’s the fucking truth, too. “I’m not a fucking hero.”

“Harrington—“ Eddie cuts in, eyes poised to roll but Steve grips at his sleeve harder, doesn’t stop even when he sees Eddie flinch for Steve catching the skin underneath; he’s not sorry. Maybe a mark, seen or unseen, will make what he’s going to say sink in; make it fucking stick.

“I need you to not be a hero,” Steve jerks Eddie’s arm fucking brutal, yanks it from the shoulder and moves Eddie’s whole body for it, like maybe that’ll drive the point home, too: “I need you to not. With me.”

Eddie’s eyes on him don’t falter, so the world doesn’t break just yet, but they do widen, and then they soften, and then they turn down in a question as his lips part to match.

“I need you to survive,” Steve wrenches out before Eddie can say anything, because Steve’s not sure if that’s where Eddie’s mouth was headed, but either way Steve needs, he needs—

“I can’t lose…” and Steve bites his lower lip for just a second, and Eddie’s eyes look dark as he runs his tongue over it to hide the fact that the racing in his blood’s making it tremble, but then he’s looking sad, he’s looking gentle as he inclines his chin and tilts his head.

“I’ll keep him safe, Steve.”

He doesn’t look away, but he cocks a brow just so behind him, where Steve can feel Dustin’s stare, and yes. Yes, Steve needs Dustin safe. Steve would lay his life down for that kid, for any of them, but that’s the fucking point, isn’t it?

For any of them.

“I need you to survive,” and Steve isn’t sure if the weight there lands on the third word or the last, maybe the second; maybe all of it. He knows where his heartbeat skips, though, and it’s around the words he can’t say for themselves yet. Can’t say for all they mean but he shakes at Eddie’s arm again around one world specifically, doesn’t notice until it’s been done and Eddie does break his gaze, and Steve feels a fault-line crack through the length of his spine and he’s cold, he’s numb, he can’t fucking breathe—

But then Eddie’s grabbing Steve’s hand where it’s gotta be somehow close to tearing through fucking animal hide, and he’s catching Steve’s eyes again and righting what’s still left of the world for the cracking through the fan of those sinful lashes and his face looks so innocent. Hopeful for unnamed and unnamable things.

“I can’t lose anyone,” Steve breathes, and doesn’t dare to move because he thinks he can feel Eddie’s pulse where his wrist lies against Steve’s skin, and it’s a violent charging wave of a thing but it’s real and it’s alive and Steve needs that, he needs that: “because I am not a goddamn hero, Eddie. I’m not. Heroes are strong. I am…”

And his voice breaks, victim of the cracking that can’t be saved just yet, just now, and he shakes his head, his neck on a pendulum, his eyes burning in the putrid dark of the end of the goddamn world.

“I’m not that strong,” Steve can’t say it on more than a gasp, and his breath is quiet but it’s shallow and frantic, too, and the underlying fact is that he’s scared.

He’s so fucking scared.

“Do you understand?”

Steve thinks he might be asking for a lot of things, inside that question. He wonders a little, which questions Eddie hears the loudest.

Wonders if the heart in his mouth is its own question; if Eddie can hear that as clear as Steve can taste it. Feel it.

Steve isn’t sure which he hopes for more, in that one. Yes or no.

“I—” Eddie starts, sounds off-balance; wrong-footed.

“Eddie,” it comes out more like a moan than Steve would have liked, but fuck if he cares anymore, fuck if he cares. Steve doesn’t have the breath for more words, but the pitch that names rolls off his tongue with is its own kind of plea, thready and needy and heartsick and just…pathetic. Desperate.

Eddie’s throat works hard around something unspoken. His eyes study Steve for a long, painful string of moments where Steve nearly chokes for the seizing of his pulse, for the frantic jailbreak it’s launching on his ribs, trying to tear his wounds open from the inside, so the outside matches how it all feels, how it all wrecks him—

“I’m…” Eddie’s voice is a slow, measured thing as his gaze flicks up and down Steve’s body, and then just Steve’s face: up and down.

“I’m not gonna be a hero.”

And it’s so simple. It’s so goddamn simple but it’s a knife’s edge, it’s a battle-axe, and there’s something in Steve’s chest stretched tighter than is safe, that holds him up and keeps him standing but those words, and Eddie’s eyes that make them a promise, that give them a weight that says yes, I understand even if Steve couldn’t say everything plain—those words are a fucking razor blade and they slice clean through the tight-stretched thing in an single tremble-beat of his heart and he topples, if only from the inside.

From the outside, his hand flips and he grips around Eddie’s fingers, wraps around the rings and bites nails into the flesh like not just his life, not just their lives, but life as a rule depends on it.

“You kind of fucking are,” Steve says without thinking, straight like a truth that’s taught in textbooks, central to the spinning of the globe. Because all he can see is a boy who didn’t have to dive into the water, didn’t have to fight off a swarm, didn’t have to stay with them, didn’t have to give or care or risk, but he did.

He still is.

“I just need you to not be, now,” and there it is. There’s the thing he can’t say in words for itself, but it’s a little terrifying how clear it sounds in the voice that comes out of him, in these words.

“I need you not to. For me.”

He feels his heartbeat shiver in his goddamn teeth, like they’ll rattle right out as soon as he opens his mouth one more time. Eddie blinks, folds his lips over his teeth before he heaves a heavy breath, his chest brushing the heel of Steve’s hand and then he’s stretching his fingers, less lacing and more letting their hands fall into one another, fill the gaps between one another’s like it’s just natural. Like that’s what gravity was made for from the start.

“When you put it that way,” Eddie exhales that huge breath, now, and Steve shudders with it, with the feel of that hand against his own. And if Eddie squeezes his hand, that’s not why Steve lets go. Or else: it is, because he has to let go, he has to leave and do his part, he has to protect them the best he can, has to fight for this, whatever it is or could be; he doesn’t let go because Eddie squeezes his hand, but it is the gesture that gives him the strength to do what needs doing.

He reaches before he can think, though he’d probably have done it anyway, having thought about it: if anyone was looking he’d just be tucking a stray curl back from Eddie’s cheek, which would probably be telling enough in itself, but no one’s got the vantage point to see the truth.

Because what Steve does is press the pad of his thumb into the hollow of Eddie’s cheek; what he does is draw a sweet little circle there until Eddie’s breath catches first for the contact, and then for the realization of something Steve himself maybe doesn’t understand, maybe doesn’t need to, and in the hellscape around them Eddie calls out an absent sun as he smiles, and Steve’s veins flood with a genuine kind of joy, a relief that doesn’t fit here but still stirs so warm, so goddamn warm in this cold fucking place, like a hand soft around his heart where a fist had held clenched and it stutters through him something horrifying but he can breathe, he can breathe for what feels like the first fucking time.

And Steve smiles back on the exhale like a reflex as he strokes Eddie’s dimple, and he figures that might say some of the things he can’t fucking say, and Eddie leans into it just enough that it’s its own answer to at least one of the questions, maybe more: maybe all the questions.

Steve really fucking hopes the answer he reads inside that tilt, that lean, the way Eddie lets his eyes close for a second extra longer than need-be on the blink: Steve hopes the answer he thinks he sees in that is one that he reads right.

He presses into the dip, hard toward the bone and he feels Eddie’s tongue poke at it from the other side of his cheek with a kind of purpose, a kind of fervor that Steve can’t quite pin down for a meaning, but that’s okay. It’s a touch, and it’s a touch returned and Steve’s heartbeat gets caught in it, now, the shivering steadying out against the heat of it all because that’s how feeling works, and it’s rolling in now ferocious like thunder, trembling in a whole new way. It’s not comfortable. It’s not safe.

But it is overwhelming. It is significant. It is…something Steve is fucking desperate to keep.

He holds Eddie’s gaze for one last second, sharp with intent, a meaning he thinks he does know, can put a word to, at least in theory, on a hope, before he makes himself turn and head to war.

Maybe for the last time.

The thunder in his heart feels, as he walks, bigger than the lightning that splits the sky in red. Feels stronger.

But still not strong enough to lose.

So he doesn’t stop himself from looking back, just once, to catch Eddie’s eyes if they’re watching—

they are, oh god, they are

—and Steve’s breath catches, and Eddie seems to notice, or maybe doesn’t have to in order to nod.

I understand.

No. Fucking. Heroes.

Then, and only then, can Steve turn back to the fight.

If nothing else: he is fucking strong enough for that.

(I honestly have no idea if this is anything, or if it’s going anywhere. I have a vague idea as to where it *could* go, but I mostly wanted to stick it somewhere it wouldn’t get lost in the meantime either way. If you happen to have stumbled upon it: enjoy?)

[hitlikehammers]

just a spin on the whole ‘shovel talk’ idea; by which I mean I had no intention of writing it until I got it stuck in my head and then got stuck on hold for like an hour and I wrote it in the notes app while I had to listen to the dumb hold music

(or: Eddie gets hurt, so Steve and Wayne participate in…something of a shovel talk.) (ao3)

By the time Wayne gets in from his shift, now, the sun’s already up. It’s strange, feels like the days are getting longer earlier every year. Eddie’s almost done with what’s looking very much like his last senior year, wonder of wonders. Wayne’s proud as hell of him. But that’s also how Wayne tells the time of year best: he doesn’t remember kicking Eddie out to class in the bright of day like this.

Maybe something got turned on it’s head by whatever caused those ‘earthquakes’. Scrambled dawn and dusk a little, like a goddamn egg. Who fuckin’ knows.

It’s a Saturday, anyway, so no dragging anyone out of bed for school either way. Wayne unlocks the door, knows Eddie spent the night at Steve’s, figures he’ll brew some coffee just for the sake of something warm, and then try for some shuteye.

He doesn’t startle, so much as freeze, when he sees the figure standing in his kitchen.

Which in itself isn’t so out of the norm; Eddie’s rarely up this early of his own free will, but ever since the he’d gotten tangled up with the Harrington boy, well before they started tangling up, that kid had become something of a fixture overnight as soon as Eddie was discharged from the hospital. And Steve Harrington was a morning person.

But again: Eddie had left to spend the night. Last night.

At Steve’s.

So Mr. Morning Person standing in the kitchen just now is, in fact, a little unexpected.

Steve had been staring at the floor until the door had opened, his hair’s all flopped over his face; gives him away. But his head sure as shit snaps up to look toward Wayne now.

“I…” Steve starts, blinks a little lost and owlish before he clears his throat, plants his feet, squares his jaw and meets Wayne’s eyes dead-on.

“We need to talk.”

Wayne wonders if this is the tone of voice the kid uses to fight the monsters they don’t talk about.

“Say again?”

Steve rolls his shoulders back and crosses his arms and oh yeah. That’s a soldier right there. Wayne’s heard about this version of the boy who smiles all dopey at this nephew like he’d hung the goddamn moon and shat out the stars, who yelled at the television with him over a couple beers on game nights. Never seen it in person before.

Looks pretty fierce.

“I love your nephew,” Steve’s saying without much give in his voice, save that his eyes are a little brighter when he adds: “More than I could ever have planned or hoped for.”

Then his eyes get darker, narrowed when he continues on:

“And you love your nephew. Better than he thought he could ever get when he showed up.”

Wayne doesn’t like to dwell on how Eddie came to be here with him, on how he was when he arrived and why. Wayne likes instead to focus on what Eddie was able to grow into, and how. Wayne can even feel a little joy in having had any hand in it, so he goes with listening not to what the boy didn’t think he could have, and instead what he ended up with that was good, even if it came as a surprise.

“And I like you, Wayne,” which sounds like a nice thing to say, except for how it’s fucking said: “and I want to believe better of you than what it all looks like.”

Wayne doesn’t say anything, because honestly he’s already just so goddamned confused. He keeps his stance neutral, and his face the same as best he can. Watches. Tries to puzzle this out.

“I don’t know if it’s just gotten too much, after everything? Or if who he likes is all well and good until it’s in your face, in your home?” And oh, Steve’s getting more than a touch of venom in his tone now, and his eyes are sharp, getting sharper by the second; “if you can’t accept that he,” and Steve takes a half step forward, and it almost looks like an accident, like he’s getting just swept up but it’s not. No.

No, it’s measured and it’s matched with a stare that’s cold as all hell and Steve wants it to be that way. Wayne thinks he means it as a warning, but fuck if he can figure out what for.

Until Steve goes ahead and tells him.

“If you think kicking him out is—“

“Now hold on now,” Wayne cuts him off because yeah, sure, Steve could tell him the what.

Didn’t mean Wayne was gonna understand it for shit.

There is one thing he definitely thinks he does understand, though:

“Are you working up to threatening me, boy?”

Steve, to his credit, doesn’t falter. He’s got some balls, if nothing else.

“Sit down,” Wayne flicks his eyes over to the couch but Steve doesn’t budge. Wayne just sighs. His feet hurt, goddamnit. And he would like to make his coffee.

“Did Eddie tell you I was kicking,” and actually, no, he doesn’t want his coffee just now because when he actually says the words implied for himself, they taste about as bitter as he can stand all on their own; “that I was kicking him out?”

Steve frowns then, and leans against the counter and ah. Wayne thinks he recognizes something in his glare, in the tilt of his chin that fits what he’d heard Ed say about some ‘king’ figure Steve had played at once upon a time. He’ll give the boy his due: looks like he’s pieced together something of whatever that’d been, that fits this whole ‘take you out back and maybe skin you’ shtick here and now.

“He showed me the newspaper clippings you’ve been leaving him. Job listings. From wanted ads in the fucking Star.” And, well, yeah. Wayne would have figured that Eddie’d show Steve. Why wouldn’t he?

“You don’t even want him in your town,” Steve bites that one out something savage, spits it vile and Wayne really isn’t fucking getting this, but he’s a simple man, and a fairly patient one for the givens. He doesn’t want to jump half-cocked when he doesn’t understand just yet.

And he’s not dumb Jesus; he well knows not to spook any creature, human or otherwise, that’s already poised to strike. And he’s fucking got one of those, it seems, coiled to pounce in front of his goddamn oven.

“The Buckley girl’s leavin’ for college,” Wayne grunts a little, keeps his voice clipped. Steve doesn’t so much as blink.

“Got into Butler, ain’t she?”

Still no blinking.

“You follow her,” Wayne offers simply, because well, hell. He sort of figured this one was as simple as it got. “He needs to follow you.”

So, sure. Eddie’ll need to pitch in for food and rent and shit. He only cuts out the jobs Eddie can do and that pay a fair wage, give him at least that much.

“I’m not going to college,” is what Steve does give Wayne, and in truth, Wayne does not even try to hold back a scoff because: honestly.

“Not what I said, was it.”

And Steve tilts his head to the side and good god, Wayne can almost see the breath where Steve tips from whatever this has been so far—still not sure exactly what but, been fairly consistent at least—into something…something else.

“Do you think he’s,” Steve starts, and his eyes glint like a fuckin’ cartoon villain. “Do you think he needs watching, like a, like a pet?” Oh, and Wayne had thought Steve spat his disgust before; he’d been wrong. “Is that what he is to you?” Then Steve scowls, and it’s real rage in him when he asks:

“Do you think that’s what he is to me?”

“Hey now,” Wayne snaps just a little, because whatever this is, nobody gets to ask if Wayne thinks something like that of his boy. Nobody. “The hell’d you get that idea?”

“He needs to follow me?” Steve’s breathing a little heavy, gearing for a fight. “He doesn’t ask you for shit, Wayne, he does everything he can, still thinks he owes you for shit he didn’t even do, but if you want him out? He’s a grown-ass man!” Steve’s hands fly up at that, the most motion, the most visible feeling he’s betrayed so far. “He doesn’t need a fucking babysitter, doesn’t need to have—“

And it’s actually the moving that flips the switch in Wayne’s head. Helps him start to piece together at least a picture that maybe could fit some of the things that don’t fit at all. This piece mainly being; how the hell can Steve Harrington live with and love with his Eddie, and not see front-row-center that needing to follow Steve was about the needing—that kind of bone-deep thing that’s just shy of dangerous—and not really at all about the following?

“Steve,” Wayne tries, because whatever else is going on, Steve loves his boy. More even than Wayne probably gave him credit for before, and Wayne kinda thought they seemed straight out a storybook. If this boy loves his nephew enough to stand there, in another man’s home—no matter how much he was welcome, no matter how much he’d made himself a staple in it—and stand toe-to-toe against that man on his turf, about his own flesh?

Well, shit.

Wayne’s just glad that, at the end of this, he knows whatever Steve’s this riled about isn’t actually fuckin’ true.

“I’m not going anywhere, because Eddie isn’t going anywhere,” Steve’s laying out plain, unshakable, like leaving never crossed his mind even if his best friend was on her way to greener pastures, and well. Huh.

“And Eddie isn’t going anywhere until Eddie goddamn wants to,” and Wayne, much as he was trying to be and will continue to be supportive of his nephew, and hell, supportive of this bullheaded kid his nephew loves, too? Wayne’s actually kind of glad to hear that. He’s not…not entirely ready to say goodbye right after graduation.

“But if he’s not welcome here?” And shit, that’s…hell. Wayne’s starting to get the maybe-picture. If Eddie didn’t plan to leave, didn’t want to yet, at least, Wayne can make a few very misguided and unfounded leaps to get to something like a roundabout hint to pack up and go to…Indianapolis?

Shit. Sure.

“You’d better fucking man up and say as much straight to his face, no more toying with him, leaving these little hints, picking at him so he’s all anxious and aching, because,” and Steve leans in, and god that kid could go work for the mafia, he’d be a hell of an enforcer, or whatever the guys are who beat people up and carry all the muscle.

“I do not take well to people hurting my boyfriend. Not well at all.“ And actually, maybe a no for the mafia, because Steve kind of looks a little pained, if still full-on resolved, when he tacks on:

“And there are consequences for hurting him, that I don’t think you’ll like.”

And Wayne doesn’t actually plan for it, and he doesn’t do it to be cruel, no mean-spirit to be found, he swears. He also doesn’t fucking doubt Steve Harrington for one single minute as to the truth of his words.

But all that shit aside: Wayne busts out cackling. Full-body guffawing. He would offer the tactic to Steve’s enemies if he didn’t love the kid at the end of the day, because it stops him dead in his tracks, eyes all wide and fucking young, if only for a second.

That’s all Wayne really needs, though.

“Sit the fuck down,” Wayne tries again as he catches his breath, and maybe Steve’s still knocked off-kilter enough to listen, but then Wayne thinks twice before he makes it to the couch:

“Actually, call your boy, wherever he is,” Wayne wonders if Eddie’s still asleep at Steve’s house; “and tell him to get here. ‘Cause we’re gonna set this straight.”

Steve stares for a minute, mouth a little dropped open, and Wayne just shakes his head, chuckles to himself as he passes Steve to the side and slaps his shoulder:

“Then sit the fuck down.”

While Steve dials, Wayne takes the opportunity to finally brew his goddamn coffee.

And it’s good, actually, in the end. Sitting them down and spelling it out, because Wayne gets to hug Eddie hard and tell him firm that he’d never, he’d never hurt him on purpose, that he always wants Eddie to come to him with his problems even if the problem is him, how Eddie’s home will always be here no matter what other homes he finds. And because, in explaining his intentions, Eddie catches on so much quicker than Steve to what Wayne had meant in knowing point-blank that Eddie’d follow Steve without a second’s thought, like an instinct already. Eddie agrees like an instinct too, automatic and immediate and it’s a quick thing to clear up, really, but it also makes clear how Steve doesn’t jump on board near as quick, doesn’t see it quite as plain as anyone else with fuckin’ eyes, so Eddie tells him. Tells him again. Kisses him long enough that Wayne goes and brews another pot of coffee in the middle, and promises he’ll make Steve know it every single day, he’ll tell him and he’ll show him and maybe his nephew’s a dramatic sappy fool, but he’s a good man, and he loves a good man, and Wayne mostly figures he couldn’t ask for more than that—so.

All’s well that ends well, or however that shit goes. 

Though when Friday rolls around, Wayne maybe grabs a few bills out of the emergency cash he keeps in an old chew can, and buys a six pack of some of the rich-boy beer he’d seen when Steve hosted that engagement to-do for Joyce and Hopper; Steve rarely drinks it, definitely not at the trailer, but Wayne has the strange-but-very-pointed urge to get him…not a gesture of apology, exactly, because while Wayne hugged the hell out of his nephew after explaining that he was trying to help he didn’t actually do anything wrong—and anyway, Steve had baked him one of those fancy chocolate pies he liked so well at Christmas as a very unstated but very fuckin’ clear gesture of his own.

So maybe it’s a thanks-for-loving-my-boy-so-well-you’ll-come-after-his-own-blood-if-you-think-they’re-the-cause-of-his-hurting-and-probably-take-them-out-with-your-crazy-ass-bat gift.

Yeah, that’ll do.

And when Steve comes over next for the game, Wayne grabs a bottle and brings it to the couch, and Steve turns red before he pops it open and tilts it toward Wayne’s can in recognition of something they really don’t have to say out loud, because that boy’s stupid like a fox.

Damn straight be he can read between the lines.

(x)

[hitlikehammers]

I accidentally started writing this future!fic married!Steddie where rockstar!Eddie agrees to a custom-dildo box set a la Rammstein and chaos ensues so I guess, have some? CW for all the sex toys and stuff

Of all the bullshit Steve has muddled half-assed and barely-passably through in his lifetime—mostly at the demand of his asshat parents—possibly the most innocent, and honestly the least painful, were the piano lessons.

Which should have been enough to warn him well in advance that that shit was going to come back to bite him in the ass in the long run.

Like: literally.

But hey, look: it wasn’t as if he took it seriously, while he’d actually been doing it. And it wasn’t as if he even did it for very long, either. It was just a…what, a nice little novelty thing? Something that he wasn’t flat-out bad at, that could make up for his shit-ass grades when his mother talked about him at dinner parties until the real sports kicked in around junior high. It was a placeholder. A stopgap. He’d never touched the thing again after his last lesson, even if it sat perfectly-dusted and regularly-tuned in the corner of his godawful mausoleum of a house up to the day he moved out and learned that it was, in fact, easier to take the loss than try to convince anyone to buy it off him if he wasn’t inclined to include delivery.

And Eddie’s van wasn’t actually fucking wide enough to pull that off, so.

Point being: he was rid of it, he did not miss it, and he honestly didn’t think twice about it again until, oh.

Almost like fifteen fucking years later.

And really, honestly: how the hell was he supposed to expect that, come those fifteen years later, he’d be a) still alive after all the alternate dimension bullshit, b) in a longterm relationship, c) not just a longterm relationship, either, but a longterm relationship that involved a level of fucking soul-deep, unflinching and unshakable love that he never could have imagined at any point in his whole goddamn life, not a single one of his half-baked romantic teenage fantasies even scratching the goddamn surface of what this is; of what he has, and d) the fact that he has it, blissfully and gleefully and joyfully, alongside the most amazing man he’s ever fucking known.

He couldn’t have guessed those things, not a single goddamn one of them, is the point. And those were all at least, like, at the forefront of his mind by the time they actually did—however improbably—happen.

So how in the actual flying fuck was he supposed to guess playing five goddamn notes on a cheap-ass Yamaha would be the thing that would ultimately damn him straight to hell?

He hadn’t even planned on it, either. Shit, he hadn’t even wanted to do it. No, see; what he’d wanted was to get his idiot fiancé off his motherfucking ass and out of the studio, but no. No, see: these last three seconds on Track Nine of As-Yet-Untitled-Album-Seven just weren’t hitting right, babe, I’ve just gotta get it to—

“Fuck it.”

Steve hadn’t even waited for a reaction before he dropped into the nearest seat—that being at the cheapo keyboard that may actually have been for someone’s kid to fuck around on to just keep them occupied, especially since there was a massive fucking Roland set-up arranged all professional-like on the other side of the room, but that was not the goddamn point.

The goddamn point was that their flight was going to leave in two hours, and it’d take half that time just to get to the fucking airport.

“Here, you want something to hit right?”

And Steve had relied entirely on the better part of two decades’ rust on whatever muscle memory he had left being just enough to shock a metalhead out of his stupor and get his ass in gear. He thinks he trilled out something from, like, Bach. Or Beethoven. Some dead ‘B’ dude his teacher made him play that he hated then and was pretty sure he hated still, if what he dragged out was anywhere close to accurate. He played it sloppy and staccato and ended fortississimo in a way that very same teacher would have reamed him out for, but honestly, Steve kind of thought all the fff’s involved were pretty fucking fitting as he bounced to his feet on the reverb and glared at his partner’s slackjawed face.

“Either that hits just fucking right, Edward, or I’ll swing this goddamn suitcase at you and see if thatdoes the trick.”

And Steve hadn’t needed to threaten further violence against the man he loved because what he got was was an armful of Eddie, and a kiss deep enough to make Steve just a little dizzy, and he hadn’t thought twice about the maybe-ten keystrokes again because they were finally on their way to a city, with a courthouse, that’d marry their asses and Steve Harrington was about to become a husband.

Steve Harrington was about to have a husband.

His heart was way too fucking full for anything else.

———————————————

But: once everyday life settled back in?

It may have been a good idea for Steve to have taken a minute—hell, really, even just a second—to think a little harder about Track fucking Nine.

———————————————

Eds always said Corroded Coffin was a band that was ‘big enough’—and Steve generally agreed. Eddie loved performing, loved writing and breaking something primal and bloody wide open from his chest and spilling it out on a record, pouring it proud and unapologetic across a stage and then—to Steve’s complete surprise, at least at first—what Eddie loved even more than any of that was coming home to Steve afterward and curling up around him in their bed, pressing the kind of smile into the line of Steve’s neck that never waned or faded; fucking somehow impossibly just grew and grew and grew.

So the band was big enough, in that they played decent sized venues when a album dropped, and they could usually make it so their tours split between winter break and summer vacation once Steve landed his own gig as a guidance counselor, so he could come with, make sure Eddie never had to curl up in bed alone. And the band pulled in enough money so the two of them lived comfortably in the house they’d bought with the trust fund that’d had Steve’s dead grandfather’s name and blessing scrawled across it so ironclad that his parents couldn’t fucking touch it, hard as they’d tried. Basically: Corroded Coffin was ‘big enough’ that they made end-of-year lists not-infrequently, but Eddie never once had to dodge the paps outside their front yard. They were big enough that the core of their fanbase had evolved from late-80s metalheads to include the vaguely obsessive diehards of the internet era who picked apart the liner notes like they held the answers to god and the universe and everything. It was weird, but the band was fucking weird, and Steve-and-Eddie were likewise pretty goddamn weird, so it mostly worked out fine.

But that was also, at the very same time, exactly how literally anyone started asking a single goddamn question about the stupidly out-of-place performance credit listed on track fucking nine, when finally-titled-Album-Seven got its release date.