#outlaw!Eddie Munson

[fairyysoup]

cowboy like me

pairing(s): wild west outlaw!eddie munson x fem!reader

summary: A strange man stumbles into your hiding place, unfortunately, and brings his trouble with him.

cw: mature themes, cowboy/wild west au, slow burn, guns, implied outlaw!reader, death threats, gunshot wounds, blood, dramatic introductions, animal death mention, intimidation tactics

a/n: consider this me playing with barbies in real time. i've had this intro chapter written for a long time and it felt like a shame to just keep it in the drafts, but i don't have a set schedule and i'll be writing this as i go. I don't expect this to be a masterpiece or anything, but i wanted to just to keep my creative juices flowing.

THIS ENTIRE FIC IS EXPLICIT. ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

read here

[deadboyfriendd]

Cochise IIl: Tango

Summary: An Old Christmas tune brings Eddie face-to-face with what he has been running from. Turns out, you aren't as different as you think you are.

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Outlaw/Doc Holliday!Eddie Munson x Reader, wild west/Tombstone AU!, drug use, drug overdose (apparent suicide), death of minor character, period-appropriate death, angst, fluff, piano smut, oral (fem receiving)

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

Word Count: 2.6k

Author's Note: I've been creatively and emotionally constipated for weeks now, so the fact that I even got this out when I did was a feart on it's own and I'm very proud of myself for it.

As always, thank you to @dr-aculaaa for being my BTS on this project, love you <3

Find the series masterlist here!

Edward was a man of repose, though, in your sadness, you’d figured you’d been, too. Maybe it wasn't repose at all. Stoicism, maybe, but there was one thing you knew for certain: He was much prettier than you. His skin of alabaster, freckles across flesh kisses of vulnerability and dusted across his worn body as a reminder of the naivety of the youth he once possessed. 

You supposed this is what it was now, slender fingers plucking at strings in the dead of night. Be it the stoicism or the naivety of youth, the moon cast a glow across his cheeks and carved rivers through the valleys of his face. You listen to the inflection of strings scraping loosely across frets. F, A, B, A, in a smooth stacking rhythm. 

There is a twang to his strumming, like there was a string loose somewhere– but not entirely like your piano. The piano had a resounding twang, it echoed within itself like the ghosts of internal hammers and keys before throwing its brashness out against the walls of your bar. You did not know how to tune it, and it would not be tuned again. 

This sound was much softer, much less brash than your own, the hum resounded within the walls of the instrument itself before dissipating the sound into the open night air like an inkwell in water. It spread, filled the space and lingered until there was another sound to see it out. A choreography of sorts, yet the song was all too familiar in the way it filled the space in your head and the hole in your heart. 

Its tiny, needle-pointed feet danced across your brain in flashes of sheer white fabric and the song of the oak floors of The Grand Hotel. Their piano did not sing the same far-east folk song as yours, no, instead it hummed an autumnal hymn of reverence and elegance. It was not as perverse as your piano, but your piano was more gentle with your heart. Your piano didn’t remind you of that worn spot on the floor, or the cracking scabs forming on your hardened knuckles. 

The corner of the door jamb dug a divot into your shoulder, but you didn’t have the grace to move without making the entire balcony creak, so you didn’t. A singular step forward pulls a groan from the floor of the porch where the wood expands with the heat of the impending monsoon, and, regretfully, his fingers pull themselves from the frets like the nails holding the plants to the rafters of the porch. 

“Hello, Edward.”

“Ma’am.”

You leaned back against the post, arms folded and unable to will away the beginning semblances of a grin from your lips. You couldn’t help the roll of your eyes in his direction. 

“I think we’re past ma’am now, Edward.” 

“Well, in that case, I also think we’re past Edward, now.” A grin that resembled your own pulled at the corners of his mouth. He had asked you to call him Eddie earlier, it felt less formal than this. The formality kept you upright, kept this whole thing from crumbling.  

You folded your arms in front of yourself, hip dropping heavy across the solid singing of your piano. Kind-of-but-not-really attempting to conceal the smile spreading across your face like a disease, “That’s a pretty song you were playing.”

“Learned it from a woman.” Eddie had said to you, arms folded, starting a stride with heavy, hollow footing towards you. Slow and in a metronomy rhythm. 

You cocked a brow at him, smile spackled heavy across your face, “Oh really?” 

“Yes, really.” He insisted, “She owned a bar out west. Played it at night on an old piano.” 

“Well I’ve got an old piano here.” You said to him, arms staying folded as you kicked your boot out in a heavy, choreographed stride, “Maybe I can teach you to play it sometime.” 

It was always this song and dance. Always this beautiful waltz of back-and-forth quips, lines wonderfully blurred by the haze of smoke from a cigar and sweet as the kiss of sasparilla, though, that bitter aftertaste would still rear it’s ugly head like the snake from the hole. Rattles thick in the stagnant air like a warning. 

“Y’know,” Eddie had said to you through a puff of smoke, “You should really stop giving me all of these free things.” 

You’d never take that into account. One cigar from the humidor, in the grander scheme of things, would never be enough repayment for anything he had done for this town. Anything he had done for you, 

“Well,” You’d quipped back, sitting back down at the polished bench of your old piano, “ – maybe you should stop saving my life, then.” 

That bitter aftertaste, a sting of smoke stilled in the in-between hung heavy in the air– shattered by the opening arpeggio shrill enough to shatter it like glass. 

“I’ll always save your life.” 

You couldn’t decipher if the pause in your song had been intentional, though, you’d hoped it seemed intentional enough to be a plausible excuse for your silence in return. The bass notes rang heavy under the shifting mechanisms in the hollow underside of the piano as you placed a foot, too-heavy, against pedals in a desperate effort to drown out the harshness of noise, the heaviness of your hands– the weight of this place. 

He filled his space on the opposite half of the thin piano bench, his legs bracing against the floor to press his back against yours. He leaned his head backwards, a welcome weight against your shoulder, and tried to feel the muscles in your hands turn over each other and vibrate in time to the bass crescendos and tinny melodic trebles. 

“Where’d you learn to play something as pretty as this, anyhow?” He kept his voice soft, turning his head to attempt to look at what you were doing. You could feel the heavy breath from his nose cool against your neck. 

“It’s an old German worship song. My husband’s mother would sing it at Christmas.”

He looked at the handwriting along the ledger lines and felt sorrow for the woman that wrote it. 

He can see their Christmas, a mother’s voice a warm river across the rocks of a piano melody, a distraction from the war waging just outside of their front doors. A fire and a meal, though, he remembered the wartime– remembered a time where his own mother had rationed enough of their weekly collection to have a real, fresh meal. He thought of that warmth and then thought of you. 

He tips his head back and blows a plume of smoke in an effort to stifle the memory. Instead, he wishes to replace that warmth with you. 

He stared at the hole in the floor, the discolored groove where you had scrubbed your knuckles bloody and raw. He thought about the him-shaped divot he had scrubbed into the frozen planes of Montana. 

He thought of her, the eldest daughter of two Roman Catholic missionaries following the fur trade to an unholy promised land. 

He thought about God, and just how cruel He could be. 

Did Eddie sit where your husband once sat? Did he lean against the expanse of your back and feel the vibration of the keys travel through the wiry expanses of your arms and settle back against him, just as Eddie had? 

Would he leave a him-shaped hole in you the same way your husband had? Would you wear down the wood the same way he wore down himself? 

“I was married, too.” he admitted to you, voice shattering the turning of sheet music and the resonant patriarchal basso that echoed out against these glass windows. 

“What was her name?”

“Christine.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes.” 

You sound like his mother, he thinks, authoritative but not coddling in the way you question him. He wonders if you feel a discomfort in this statement. He hopes you feel a solidarity in your grieving enough to overlook it. You do not ask him how she died, though, if you were to, he would tell you:

Christine dies at the hand of laudanum, too beautiful to not have a devastating fault. The red-haired daughter of southwest Arksansas– far across that deep blue water she lived, and it was across that water where he had loved and left her. He thought of her skin, like ivory though cold as porcelain even long before her death. Her body, as it was laid to rest, had remained the same even in death as it had during her life. No amount of insurmountable beauty could cover the sullenness under her eyes or the frailness of her wrists. The red halo of hair surrounding her head could not guarantee a peaceful end. No amount of love was enough to save her from herself. 

He thinks of her eyes, long before the hollowness had clouded them over like a storm. He remembered a time where there was a soft glow there, a gas lamp that only he could ignite. He wondered if your eyes held that same glow. 

He thinks of a time where she stood outside of her father’s river home, barefoot in the mess of cattails and thick grass to encase him in a loving embrace. He had insisted that she put some shoes on. He wondered if you did the same, letting your feet burn in the sun-warm sand. He wondered if your husband insisted that you do the same.

Their marriage had died long before she had. The kiss of opium tincture still bitter against his own lips as he pressed them to hers for a last time. 

Your hands were not as tender as hers, yet the tenderness was not what he craved. He thought about this now, as you held his arm in a grounding grip. Tight enough to know that you were still there but not enough to hurt. He wondered if you needed that, too. 

This kiss was all-encompassing, starving in nature, though awkward on the deliverance. 

He knew you would forgive him if he was being too forward, but he figured you were a little past apologies now. Your back is laid across his lap, twisting and contorting to meet his own lips from your side of the piano bench. He uses this leverage to pull you forward, more over him than against him. 

There are hot tears that run down his cheeks, though, he’d figured you were past those now, too. 

His embrace around your back is not hungry– it is desperate, as if he is clinging to anything to keep him tethered to this plane. 

The piano bench scrapes loud against the knotted wooden floors of the bar as he pushes your back against the keys. They sounded with an off-key crash and lingered for moments too long. You do not feel the way the keys and beveled finish of the piano press into your back, in the same way he does not feel the knotted pine dig into his knees when he kneels at your feet. 

“Please,” He whines, tears no longer streaming down his ruddy face, though the sticky tracks remain, “Please jus’ let me taste.” 

It is not possible for you to deny him when crystalline tears budding up against a pink lashline– when a heavy hand drags itself against your leg in anticipation– no– pleading. 

You lean further back, balancing on the slippery edge of the piano bench, and you swear you can hear a soft, “Thank you.” whispered against your thigh between soft, wet kisses. 

His grip is bruising. In the same way you had tethered him to this earth, he binds you to him. One hand lies on the pool where the outer fat of your thigh presses flat against the wood, the other a vice, at your knee in order to keep your legs open. 

The edges of teeth graze against tender skin, affixing themselves along garter belts as hungry hands find purchase on your hips beneath chemise underdresses. Hot, humid breath dampens your skin as it escapes from his teeth– clamped along the garter now sliding down your leg and off your foot. A strong hand pushes back upwards, feeling along the silken hair there. 

Edward was a man of repose. In your sadness, you’d figured you’d been, too. Though, you wouldn’t have guessed it by the way he pressed a hot, flat tongue against your core and traveled upwards slowly in an experimental taste. 

“Like fuckin’ sugar,” He wines into you, his hair a splayed mess against your thighs, his tongue finding purchase against your core. 

Thick fingers prod within you, the slow in and out a tether to focus on as you shook. He wanted you to shake. He wanted you to tremble and shiver all of the worries that had plagued you to the bone. 

Eddie could not be your husband, but he could make you forget– even if it was just for the night. 

He reaches upwards from beneath your dresses, a hand intertwining itself with yours and feeling across the ridges of your cut and calloused knuckles. 

You could not be Christine, but you could be here– even if it was never in your bed. 

At the precipice of your climax, you cry out, and he likes to think that it is for him. He squeezes your hand, emerging from beneath your clothes with hair askew and a dewey sheen across reddened cheeks. When he kisses you, it is softer and you taste yourself on his lips. He does not think of the bitter taste of opium residual on the lips of Christine. Instead, he only thinks of you. 

He does not waste time when he hikes your skirtings above your waist, hands like a vice against the fat of your hips. He is quick when he unclasps his belt and unbuttons his trousers, and smooth when he slides himself into you. 

You are quieter than other women, soft staccato breaths escaping with whispers of moans punctuate his thrusts– slowly and then with more rigor. 

He keeps a furrowed brow as a bead of sweat drips down his nose and onto the bare skin on your chest where his lips now find purchase, staccatos of his own dotting your skin like galaxies in the vastness. 

He sees the way the soft glow of the lamp light heats your skin, the pink ruddiness that graces your cheeks or the glitter that flashes over your eyelids when the light catches the oil there. He sees the way your soft lashes kiss the apples of your cheeks or the soft folds of your neck as your head lolls to the side in satisfaction. He sees the way your hair curls with sweat around your ears in soft coils or the way his saliva has settled in a gloss along your lips. 

And by the stars above you, he swears that he could love you.

A thumb is heavy against you, in circles and figure eights as it wills you towards the edge that you closely teeter upon. 

“It’s okay,” He whispers to you, by soft pianissimo whispers, “You can have this. I want you to have this.” 

A barely-there sigh escapes your lips, deeper-winded than the rest and you allow your body to fall slack as he continues to pump in a rhythm, finishing quickly and lowering your underskirts as he sinks to his knees. 

Tonight, you would hold his head against your stomach as hot tears would once again roll down his face. Tonight, you would card fingers through the tangles in his hair as he lays his upper body limp and racks with soft sobs across your lap. 

Tonight, you think you will unmake the left side of the bed. 

[thediktatortot]

I had plans to do this piece for @mungroveweek but I got exhausted and was working on something else, but I’m gonna post the sketch anyway so you guys know that I’ll have this piece in the works 🥰

[blueywrites]

outlaw!eddie has my heart already 😩💕

ah yes, my love. outlaw!eddie....

Hellfire has menaced the town of Hawkinsville for as long as anyone can remember. Clothed all in black, faces painted fiery red, they ride in led by the devil himself and make off with the spoils of their terror. No business is safe, least of all the ones owned by the Carver family, the closest equivalent to oil magnates a quaint town like Hawkinsville could have.

R is betrothed to eligible bachelor Jason Carver, who'd had his eye on her, it seems, ever since she stepped foot off that train as Hawkinsville's newest schoolteacher. She's quite the envy of the town and is beyond delighted to receive Jason's offer. Though they've only been courting for two months, he's been a perfectly respectable gentleman and quite the charmer.

It's just such bad luck that R had to be in just the wrong place at the wrong time so as to run into the Devil of Hellfire in the midst of a raid. And most certainly terrible, awful, rotten luck that he'd had to make the snap decision to take her with him.

Ed Munson is kicking himself now, but when he discovers she's set to be Jason Carver's little wife? Well, now... this might be his biggest bounty yet.

[undead-supernova]

The AUs

Cochise by @deadboyfriendd

Get Off — @palmtreesx3

Satisfied by @stevesxyellowxsweater

The Killers

Shouldn’t Be Attracted To A Criminal by @asimpforthe80s

The Monsters

Eddie the Victorious by @xoxovivafics

sympathy for the devil by @munsonsbtch

warm like moonshine by @somnambulic-thing

[sidekick-hero]

(steddie | mature | 2.1k | tags: outlaw!eddie, future fic, starcrossed lovers finding each other, happy ending, the happy ending to he's all that I've got (don’t take that sinner from me) we deserve | @steddielovemonth prompt Love is the only thing we can take with us by @thefreakandthehair | AO3)

Sometimes Eddie wondered how many times you could lose everything and be forced to start over before you just...gave up.

The first time the world as he knew it fell apart, he had only been ten, too young to really understand what it meant as his mom grew weaker and weaker until the doctors took her away. He had been allowed to visit her one last time to say goodbye, and even at ten he had understood that from that day on things would be different.

There would always be a before and an after.

Sitting on a cliff in Maine, overlooking the sea with a crumpled photograph in his hand, he remembers the last time he spoke to his ma, curled up against her on the too-small bed in the too-white room.

"I miss you, Mama," he had whispered, his voice hoarse from crying so much lately. He didn't want to cry now, because he knew it always made his mommy sad when he cried, but he couldn't help the little sniffle.

His mom had stroked his hair. "Oh baby, I know. I missed you too, my sweet little boy."

"I asked Daddy when you were coming home to us, but he didn't say. He just said I had to stay with Uncle Wayne for a few days." The hand in his hair had felt good, soothing. His mom was soft and warm under his cheek, and even though she didn't smell like the perfume she usually wore, it almost felt like they were just cuddling in her bed after one of his nightmares.

"You're not coming home." Eddie added, not really a question because he might only be ten and sometimes school was hard because he was so bored and distracted, but he wasn't stupid. No matter what some of the kids on the school bus said, or his dad when Eddie could smell the bitter stench of whiskey on his breath.

His mom had pressed a kiss to the top of his head and sighed. "No, baby. I'm not." And then, in an even softer voice, "I have to go, even though I don't want to leave you."

"Then take me with you!" He had blurted out, scared and sad and angry at the world for taking his mommy away when she didn't even want to go.

"Baby."

"I don't want you to be alone, Mama." Because even though Eddie didn't really know much about death, he didn't want to think about his mama going somewhere dark and scary and being all alone without him to take care of her.

She had held him as tightly to her body as her dwindling strength would allow. "I won't be alone, baby. I will have you and Daddy and Uncle Wayne with me. Your love for me and my love for you. That's the only thing we can take with us, Eddie. That's why it's so important that you find people that you can love and that love you back, so that you're never alone. You will always have them with you."

His mom died the next day, taking all his love with her.

It was a long time before Eddie found that love in his heart again. Wayne helped a lot by teaching him that love came with no strings attached. Love was just because. Gareth and Jeff and Grant helped too, sharing his passions, looking up to him and giving him a place to be whoever he wanted to be, no matter how nerdy or loud or brash.

But it wasn't until Dustin, oddly enough, that he found that selfless love in his heart again. He gladly sacrificed himself for the kid who always believed in him, who looked past his masks and antics and shields and saw him, and embraced the man he found underneath it all with all his might.

And then Steve Harrington stumbled into his life and turned it upside down. Well, even more upside down than the actual Upside Down, which in a strange, roundabout way meant that Steve made his life feel right again.

Falling in love with him was both inevitable and almost an afterthought.

He was accused of murder. He ran away. He met Steve. He found out that monsters were real and fought them with a bunch of teenagers. He got to know Steve and liked what he found, a lot. He almost died. He woke up from a coma to find Steve at his bedside. He kissed a boy for the first time and liked it, a lot. He liked the boy, he liked Steve, a lot. He had to run from the law before he could even tell him he loved him.

His mama had been right, though.

Eddie had to leave everything behind, his guitar, his books, the only family he had left, his friends, hell, even his name.

He had to leave Steve behind, hopes and dreams turned into an almost.

The only thing he took with him was his love for Steve.

It made him reckless and stupid, selfless and brave. It made him seek Steve out, over and over again, and he found that he was taking Steve's love with him as well.

He risked getting caught again and again, and that would not only mean prison or, more likely, the death penalty. It would mean they might get the idea that Steve had helped him escape. Or Wayne. Dustin and the other kids. That's why Eddie stayed away from them, because it was safer for them.

He couldn't stay away from Steve, not until Steve asked him to.

At first, Steve never would; he would only ask Eddie to stay or to take Steve with him. He couldn't do either of those things because he knew what kind of life Steve would face if he came with Eddie. A life that was cold and bleak, hunger and loneliness, homesickness and the struggle to survive that ate at you every day.

No, Eddie couldn't, wouldn't ask that of Steve. All he ever wanted for Steve was a safe and comfortable life. Some nights, when he couldn't sleep, he thought about what he would have wanted for their future. A small house, a dog. Waking up in Steve's arms under warm covers. Eating breakfast in their sunny kitchen. Laughing and dancing barefoot to old songs on the radio like he had seen his parents do. Coming home to the smell of freshly cooked food and someone waiting for him. Kissing and touching and loving Steve as the sun set in the west, only to do it all over again the next day. And the next.

It took Steve eight years, five months and fifteen days to ask Eddie to stay away. He was so sad, so heartbroken when he told Eddie, "I love you and I can't keep waiting for a future that will never come. I want to be with you so bad, Eddie. You have no idea. But I can't keep doing what we're doing. I can't just have pieces of you twice a year."

They had made love that day, even if it had been on their knees on the dirty ground in a dark alley, and then Eddie had walked away.

Now, in the middle of nowhere in northern Maine, he thinks about those words. Playing them over and over again. Hoping the pain will kill him, thinking it might. Steve's love was what kept him warm, kept him going, even if he didn't really know where. At least he had Steve, so it didn't matter that he had nothing else.

Eddie had thought that his love was enough for Steve as well, but he should have known better. Steve deserved so much more than waiting for a future that would never come.

He plays the scene again, twisting the knife deeper, hearing Steve say, "I can't - Eddie, I can't do this anymore. It's killing me, never knowing when you'll be back, if you'll be back."

A large fishing boat honks in the distance, the sound barely registering as he thinks of the future he had always dreamed of with Steve. Coming home to him every day because they had a life together, whatever that looked like.

It wouldn't matter because they'd have each other.

The fishing boat honks again as it approaches Cutler's harbor. Maybe he could get a job on a ship again, he thinks distantly, it had been surprisingly good work. Busy and smelly, but good. It's nice here, secluded, so far from the hustle and bustle of the big cities. No one knows who he is, most people don't really care about national news, because what do they care? It's more important to keep up with local events.

Looking back at the one and only picture of him and Steve, an idea begins to form in his mind.

Eddie feels lighter as he slides the postcard into the mailbox before walking back up the driveway to his house. The mailman would be here in two days, but Eddie couldn't wait any longer, afraid he'd chicken out and wait another six months before working up the courage to actually send the damn thing. It's been 730 days since he last saw Steve and he feels every one of them etched in his heart like a prisoner marking the passing of days with scratches on his prison wall.

It's a risk to reveal his whereabouts like this, especially considering he doesn't even know if Steve is still in Indy or has finally moved on, moved to be with his friends instead of waiting for Eddie's ghost to haunt him. Eddie didn't give his address or even the town he lives near. Just that he's in Alaska and a hidden clue he hopes Steve will be able to understand. Just a little line tucked away at the bottom of the card, far less obvious than the Hey, Big Boy that says, "I took the road less traveled, I see you at the end of it."

Now all Eddie could do was hope, his love wrapped around him like a blanket as he continued to build a life here, at the end of the road.

Opening his front door while holding back an excited puppy is a feast he's still trying to master. Cerberus is an Alaskan Malamute destined to be big and strong, and the fact that even as a puppy Eddie has little chance against the bundle of excited energy doesn't bode well for him.

"Bear, come on, go to your place," he commands as he pulls the door open, his foot holding back the ball of fur that is trying to get to whoever is on the other side first.

"I'm sorry, he's not really trained yet and he's stubborn to boot," Eddie apologizes, not even looking up at his visitor as he continues to wrestle with Cerberus. It's probably the mailman or Mrs. Jenkins, the closest thing to a neighbor 'James Smith' has, since she lives only five miles from him. She likes to check on him from time to time, saying that a young man like him shouldn't be alone. He strongly suspects that she wants to set him up with her daughter.

"I guess it's true what they say, like owner, like dog, huh?" a warm voice chuckles and Eddie freezes. Cerberus takes the opportunity to leap over his leg and into Steve's arms as he bends down to greet the little traitor.

The puppy immediately begins to lick Steve's face with enthusiasm and wriggles in his arms to get even closer, making Steve laugh with his whole face. Eddie makes a mental note to give Bear some extra treats.

"I think he really likes me," Steve delights, and Eddie manages a weak chuckle of his own, still reeling from finding the man he loves and thought he had lost on his doorstep.

"Like owner, like dog, I guess."

That gives Steve pause, finally looking up from the bundle of enthusiastic puppy love in his arms.

"Eddie," he breathes out in wonder, his eyes taking in Eddie's body from head to toe, and Eddie wonders if he still likes what he finds. His body has changed, bulkier from all the physical labor he does, but also older. More scars, a beard against the cold, his hair cut shorter to look less distinctive.

"Hey, Stevie. It's James, actually."

"Yeah, they told me when I asked around and gave your description. Wasn't easy finding you." Steve adds, not angry, just a fact. Like he doesn't mind. As if he didn't travel thousands of miles to find Eddie.

"But you did."

"I did. You wanted me to, right? That's what your card was for?"

Reaching for Steve to pull him inside, Eddie closes the door behind him and takes a step toward him. Steve puts the puppy down and Bear, bless his heart, goes to his place without being told.

"Steve," Eddie says as he slides his fingers between Steve's, "I always wanted to take you with me, but I never felt I could. Not until I could offer you something. Well, it's not much, just a small house and an untrained, stubborn puppy, but it's something. If you want it."

Pulling Eddie in with their joined hand, Steve wraps his arm around him.

"It's you, that's all I ever wanted."

[augustjustice]

I do believe that Eddie as a non-conformist would initially balk at the idea of getting married--he doesn't want to be like the straights, Stevie!--but I also firmly believe that Steve would be able to convince him that it's totally badass and a 'fuck you' to the system to have a marriage ceremony when it isn't even legal. Like, what could possibly be more metal than that?

[all-the-words-necessary]

Regency AU: Steve Harrington, set to inherit the title of Duke, is the most eligible Bachelor this season. Eddie could care less, he's got more important things to worry about, like how he needs this pianist job to work out or if he and his uncle are going to be out on the streets.

He's heard what the girls at the opera house say, if you become a paramour of a rich titled man then your bills are set...and well. Eddie's never been one to ignore a good business opportunity.

[eddiexmunsn]

cowboy eddie munson…….a goofy, quick-witted outlaw who loves his horse, smoking cigarettes, playing his guitar by the campfire, and staying up late to watch the stars sparkle while the wolves howl

i love him 🤭

[sabbathbloodysabbeth]

Is it three lines per bat, or three lines per ask?

🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇

Just for you I decided to do three lines per bat so here's around 24 lines of megalomania!

He moves to the door, preparing to open it before Robin's body slams into his own causing him to stumble into the wall. His elbow nearly puts a hole in the fancy wallpaper as his eyes squint suspiciously at the smaller girl. 

"Robin, why are you not allowing me to leave this room?" His suspicions are to the roof as he moves adjusting his balance so that he doesn't completely topple over from holding his best friend's weight along with his own.

"Because.." Robin drags out, eyes looking anywhere but at Steve as she purposely tilts her head at an angle. 

"Because why?" Steve tries his hardest not to come off as annoyed but after the amount of shenanigans Robin has put him through he was slowly not finding them funny anymore. No matter how much he loved her, he was slowly becoming desperate for one vacation. A vacation that wouldn't feel right because she wasn't there next to him. Damn them and their weird platonic bond. However, he wouldn't have it any other way if it meant he had this wonderful being for the rest of his life.

"Because I may or may not have taken us to the Cunningham's residence," Robin finally looks at Steve, looking like a kicked dog as she begins to chew on her lip. Which was going to scab up if she didn't stop. 

"First off, stop chewing your lip I'm not going to help you take care of it again, and secondly.." He takes a moment to pause, dramatically clearing his throat before he continues what he's saying. "Why the hell are we at Chrissy's? You know how bad you get around her, it's bad enough we are on the run because you are a witch, which isn't your fault, and being on the run is fun but it would make it ten times worst if they find out you are also a lesbian as well Robby." Steve doesn't yell, his voice stays in a rough whisper. Trying to keep his voice as low as possible.

Robin's mouth falls open a little bit, clearly becoming a bit more upset the more they talk. "Neither of those things are my fault, Steven, Why should we silence ourselves in an attempt to adapt to a life they want us to live in? It's so fucking unfair!" Her voice has always been raspier than Steves and because of that Robin could never stay that soft with her words so that others couldn't hear.

[deadboyfriendd]

Cochise Il: Mudsill

Summary: The morning after his first day reaps a certain morosity with it. After a gruesome shootout with a grisly outcome, he vows not only to protect this town, but you as well. In more ways than one. The second part of Cochise. Sequel to Nellie. 

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Outlaw/Doc Holliday!Eddie Munson x Reader, wild west/Tombstone AU!, Sherrif!Steve (he has a mustache), guns and gun violence, death of minor original characters, period-appropriate death, suggestions of lynching and public execution, drug use, angst, fluff, save a horse (the horse watches in this one), ride a cowboy, smut included, death of a spouse discussed in this, blood and wounds (gunshots), minor unintentional self-harm, unprotected p in v, creampie 

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

Word Count: 6.1k

Author's Note: This is for Drac <3 thank you for beta reading! And also for dealing with me going, “now what?” every fifteen seconds, and also for being my nepo goth mommy and being the only reason I get reads on this godforsaken app and also for indulging me in this fantasy and also for ominously looming over my docs because the performance anxiety makes me write better and more consistently. 

Find the series masterlist here!

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place, for where we are is hell,

And where hell is must we ever be.

The morning is nonetheless blistering, no qualms of early warmth and birds singing. Here, the sun meant silence, this world turned itself over to the night and reaped rest by the break of dawn just to escape its harshness until winter. Not all would make it. By five the blossom of the night-blooming cereus will have shriveled away, and by six the earth would begin to heat. 

The sun does not rest, only lies in wait. Remnants of it settling in the sand beneath him. 

He awakes with a groan and a pulling sting that blossoms across his neck and face at the first stale movements of wake. He could hear the vacant crunch of footsteps against gravel, hollow and softened by the fine sand beneath them. A shadow overtook him, one that granted a relief like the sour sting of white chocolate against the prevalence of melting.

“Well, good morning, Edward.” His eyes nearly crossed to look up towards you, attempting to make out any of the features of your face. They were too backlit from the sun and his eyes were still too sensitive. A basket for laundry sat firm against your hip, emptied. Above you, there is a line strung from one ironwood to the next, a washbasin several feet away with suds still running down the sides. 

He bears his senses, pulling his mind away from that celestial body it rested in the previous night. He tried not to think of your supple nature in front of him, the way your silken skin felt beneath his fingers or the way the ends of your hair tickled against his belly within his dream. It was up now, twisted into braids and tucked unto itself. 

His face and neck are red, you aren't incredibly introspective, and you can’t tell if it is a blush or the beginnings of a sunburn. You waited to wake him, washing and hanging your laundry before the break of dawn. He seemed tired, but leaving him out in the sun seemed downright cruel. You ‘d think of him in the same respects as the rattlesnake– the one who cooks from the outside in when it sits in the sand too long. 

You offer your hand to him, and he takes it. You are much stronger than your body implies, taking on the weight of him with a pull, hands calloused from housework and the general husbandry that comes from western living. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” You asked behind a grin, by now his eyes had adjusted and settled on the whites of your teeth and the upturned fat of your face. 

“Apparently I was the only one that wanted to.” He was sore from the ground, though he couldn’t quite tell if his tailbone hurt from the sand or the train to Tombstone. He watched you in stride, taking a few of your smaller ones ahead of him. 

You giggled softly, and it sounded like church bells. You looked over your shoulder at him, and he couldn’t bring himself to watch your eyes, instead, settling on the way the flesh of your neck folded at the crease. He counted the moles to ground himself,  “The west never rests, Edward.” 

He followed your stride for a few steps, his long strides becoming staccatos in comparison to yours. He looked down at his feet, avoiding rocks beneath him in his still-weary state and watching the dust kick up from beneath your heels to collect on the front of his boots. 

The gold of your earring refracted a light that brushed across your cheek, had Eddie not been staring so intently, he would have missed it. He’s glad he didn’t. “Steve already came ‘round this morning. Said a telegraph came in for you. Trains’ delayed ‘till ‘bout tomorrow.” 

The confession hit him like a shot to the chest, and he could help the dramatization of the groan that escaped him, “Christ.” 

“Got something important on that cargo train?” You raised a poignant eyebrow at him, more motherly in nature. It questioned the dramatics more than his personage. 

He shook his head, unable to stop himself from chuckling at his own bad luck, “Only my horse… and everything else.” 

“I see.” You nodded back in repose, turning your body back to face him. Your hands still clutching the laundry basket braced over your hip, “Well, let's see if we can’t scrape up some fresh clothes for you to wear then.” 

You reach your hand out towards him in invitation, his own forbearance of politeness and handshakes prompts him to reach out, though, you don’t seem to let go. You don’t notice the rouge of his cheeks or along the tips of his ears in schoolboy embarrassment beneath his sunburn. Your hands aren’t soft, not like the other women he’s touched. Your hands have been kissed with the calluses of men’s work. Ropes on horses and hands on guns. His memories reel back to your husband, the slack you were forced to receive in his absence. You wouldn’t have to pick up any slack on Eddie, he didn’t plan on dying soon. Not if he could help it. 

You use your hand like a reign, pulling him towards the wrought-iron staircase within the bar that led to your home. The staircase rocked with each footstep – a solid structure that seemed not-quite fixated to its endpoints. 

He looked around at the corridor, modest, but nevertheless a home. The dark wood on the floors closely resembled the mahogany excessiveness of The Grand Hotel, though, the expanse of it was limited to the flooring. A pale Mexican plaster covered the vast expanse of the walls, rounding the corners and archways into a smooth texture. 

He noticed the boots by the door, covered in dust and much too large to be your own. It filled in the gaps where the empty spots on the wall still lie bare, and where the second dining chair had remained tucked neatly beneath the table. Though this place resembled a home, it was not. Instead, it housed the ghost of your husband. He laid in bed at night next to the shell of grief that resembled you, the decanter on the table filled with tears of loneliness and guilt. 

You opened the thin door in the corridor, and he realized that all of your husband’s clothes had been moved here. He tried not to picture you pulling them out of the dresser they resided in, tried not to imagine the tears streaming down your face as you buried it within the fabric just to smell him again. Just to feel like he was close enough to touch one more time. 

The garments were well-starched. A white high-collar shirt, black vest, black pants, black cravat. He was a man after Eddie’s own heart, that was for sure. You excuse yourself towards the kitchen, allowing him open access to the dressing room to change. 

When he slipped through the door, loose on its hinges, he met your eyes– pressing and cold in nature. It wasn’t intentional, at least, not in the sense that your coldness was directed towards him. At an instant, your hands had found his chest, and he peered downwards to watch them, intently. It was a force of habit, righting a missed button and an off-set pattern on the vest. Once you corrected it, you laid them flat against his sternum.

He thought back to last night, the pressing warmth of your hands against his chest and the soft brush of your hair that tickled against his belly. He thought back to the purely pornographic sounds that resounded off the walls of The Grand Hotel in his dream. Though, you’d felt more human now, with the hurt in your eyes that dragged like a trunk you couldn’t rid yourself of. Your eyes carried a grief like granite, pulled from the quarry chipped into the mountain of your life and heavy on your soul. 

He thought back to what The Sheriff had said to him, about picking up the slack when your husband died. Who had been there when you were grieving? Surely the sheriff, but he had said it himself. You had your pick, but had never taken another lover. He wondered if it could be him. 

+

There is an ex-cathedra bass crescendo that reverberates against the dainty backing of tenor melodies in the bar at night, long after the dust has settled beneath the feet of the common folk. You never understood why the people here still chose to do their bidding during the day, when the sun casted an itching burn across the delicate cutaneous layers of exposed skin like lye. 

It was not Christmas, and yet you’d found pieces of words in fragments of memories beneath your breath as you hammered against the keys with clumsy fingers. You grazed your tongue against your bottom lip, still in search of the remnants of sugar from the dried Christmas fruits you’d been given as a child. 

There is a sombering solidarity in this aloneness, and in the way you no longer search for the feeling of your husband’s fingers against the cold ivory. It was just that now: cold. That emptiness would always linger, but that coldness of keys was now not for the absence of his warmth. They just were. 

Eddie watched you from the gap in the glass door to the parlor, smoothing the hairs on his arms down from where the low, deep notes rattled in his coccyx. He let the press of the mesquite against his back keep him tethered to the earth. He’d recognized the song like a ghost, Christmases past like bugs with needle-prick feet crawling up his back in repose. Where your fingers lay heavy against untuned, rattling keys, he found a softness. A delicacy in this world that was anything but. He saw tarantula legs in your spindles of fingers, light and silent as they crawled across ivory. 

There was not an inherent evil to the tarantula. Only existence. 

Your own existence was different here. You weren’t so on edge now that you figured you were alone. He felt guilty taking advantage of your comfort like this, but your softness radiated light out past the windows and into the sand outside in a warm, golden glow. Your lashes kissed in the corners of your eyes, nursing against the apples of your cheeks as you looked down in concentration. He wanted to smooth out the line forming between your brows. Your hair lay wild, splayed across your shoulders and roused from the removal of your hat. 

He adjusted himself against the door frame, the creak against the flooring from behind you sent you reeling upwards, the scratch-key a heavy hand against incorrect and out-of-tune keys. The man in black looming behind you like a shroud. You’d gasped without realizing it. He took a step forward, hand out in gentle appeasement as you whipped around, more startled than afraid. He registered it as fear. Your hand came to your chest in repulse, laying flat and tight against your breastbone. 

He takes a few steps forward, quickly closing the gap between you. The echo from the heel of his boot bounced off your body and you convinced yourself that the ringing in your ears was from that alone. 

“Woah, Nellie.” He’d said to you, softly, a pressing grin upturning crookedly at the corners of his lips. This was not the first time he’d used the horse moniker, and you’d figured this was not going to be the last. You’d blamed your own spooked nature at the way your breath did not fill your lungs completely and not the way Eddie’s warm hands felt as it picked yours up off of your chest, holding it between his two like a vice in apologetics. 

You squeezed his hand under your fingers, shaking it slightly in annoyance, “You scared me half to death, Edward.” 

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, ma’am.” He’d said in apology, once again, yet the smile pulled across his face further, pretty teeth grazing against the suppleness of flesh. 

You raised a brow at him, stern in nature, “When you smile something awful like that, it makes me think you did.” 

His smile stretched wider in his face, a laugh coming to fruition in his chest and exhaling through his nose and over your face, “I didn’t. Honest.” Not that you really thought that he did in the first place.

His hand left yours and found itself around your waist, where the tautness of your dresses stretched over the softness of your hip. He grasped for skin beneath the ruching of the fabric over you, warm hand splayed across your back. 

He was close — entirely too close to be considered professional or polite, but you welcomed it. You felt the breath from his nostrils, cooling against the bridge of your nose and dissipating across the crests of your cheeks. His lips parted, and the breath changed to warm. You could taste the tobacco that resided against his lips like the sugar you’d searched for on your own mere moments ago. 

His weight against your chest is foreboding, and even the bracing from his wide palm cannot stop the soft step back you take. The heel of your own hand presses against a random selection of treble keys and creates an awful, off-putting sound that makes him jump.

You can’t stop the girlish giggle that slips past your lips at the momentary terror that registers in your eyes. You don’t know if it is because of the immediate karmic justice or the fact that he was so startled by the noise he just listened to from afar. He looks back down towards you with a look that mirrored your own previous one, trying to force the smile off of his face down into a scowl. 

“I didn’t mean anything by it, honest.” You laughed between syllables, quickly pulling the key cover over the tops of the ivories and resting back against them.

“Well, you’re smiling something awful like you did.” 

+

The air outside was still. Too still. Like it lies in wait of travesty that happened in a near-constant turnstile. There is no one in the streets tonight, the party crowd gathered before the stage of The Grand Hotel to watch tonight’s opening of Faustus. 

However, Hell would not just be a frame of mind tonight. 

Michael ‘Mudsill’ Doten leaks off the steps of The Grand Hotel in a clumsy choreography of laudanum and drink, pupils blown wide in an opiate tincture waltz. The peacemaker across his hip a metronome of depravity waiting for the subtle fingertip of quarter counts to off-beat.

He howls at the moon, firing one, two shots towards it into the open air. It both draws townspeople towards and away from the scenery. Marshall Milt Kilmer steps off the balcony of The Grand Hotel haughtily, fumbling with the weapon holstered against his side. 

From behind the glass at the Whispering Sands, you stand at the sound of gunshots, hands finding your own weapon holstered beneath the folds of your dresses. Eddie’s large palm finds your shoulder, squeezing softly in a promise of not us. His other hand met the stock of his gun, tucked away in the shoulder holster against his waist. 

“Michael! Come on now.” You heard Milt start, sound clear despite being muffled by glass. The commotion must have been right outside your window. Eddie and yourself listened from behind the front door, air between your bodies stagnant in wait. 

Michael was slovenly, more so than usual, “Well, howdy Milt.” He stumbled, lame as a duck and ten times more disgusting. He wielded his pistol like a bomb with the pin pilled, a travesty in wait. 

“Alright, hand those over, Michel.” Milt insists, gun wielded in defense against Michael. The commotion has attracted onlookers that seeped from ant pile buildings in uneasy swarms – the Doten family leaking out and congregating in their own slovenly hive like wasps,  “Hand ‘em over!” Milt calls, more firm this time. 

Micahel takes a look around, then back at the County Marshall before him. His pupils are blown wide like dinner plates, “Okay, Milt, I’ll hand ‘em over. It’s only fun. Here you go.” 

But what are thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?

There is a split second in which you can see the silver line between life and death, in which you can walk the plane between realms. There reaps a morosity heavy on your heart in the fractions of a second before a man’s life ends. It is entirely too familiar to you, and you crumble under the weight of it all. You don’t hear the crack of the gun, and you don’t see Milt’s body fall limp, but you see the breath that falls from his lips that keeps his soul on a lark. You try to catch it in your hands to force back into his lungs. Running towards his body felt like wading through sand, burning hot and suffocating around your waist. He was dead by the time your hands cupped around his shoulder, but the remnant of his essence felt like a sheet, drowning you in the great planes of the Gila.

“Milt? Come on now.” Michael said, the gun long dropped on the ground. He nudged Milt’s boot with his own, unable to process the velocity of the events that transpired just moments before. 

The sheriff is fast to rush Michael, cracking the stock of his own peacemaker across the crown of the man before him, the body dropping heavy against the sand to your left. Heavy, but still alive. 

Everything is heavy. The weight that you bear crouched beside Milt’s body, the way Michael slumped into the sand beside you, the crowd gathering around the sudden onslaught of commotion, and the hand against your back that undoubtedly belonged to Edward. 

“Get him off the street.” Steve ordered, sweeping his peacemaker around in a circle to fend off the feigning crowd, “Alright, back off.” He said, stern and loud. You’d have half a mind to be afraid of him when he was like this, if you weren’t still in shock. 

“Get a rope!” Someone from the town said, stepping down from a nearby patio. 

“String him up!” 

Edward could sense the rising tension, his other hand coming firmly around the taught expanse of your waist and pulling you back without giving you room to fight. You stumbled backwards in a stupor, hot tears streaming down your face emotionlessly. You were a stone. A puppet in his hands watching the scene before you unfold. 

Steve’s face hardened, jaw clenched under cold eyes, “Nobody’s hanging anybody.”

“He just killed a man–”

“And he’ll stand trial for it. Now, get back! Move!” Steve made sure the hammer was pulled back on his gun, serious as sin. You don’t think you’d ever seen him this scary before. You didn’t think he could be this scary at all. 

“Turn him loose.” One of the town patrons called from the building riot, stepping forward from the mass. He was a dirty cattle pusher that still carried the grime and anger of a juvenile foal. When Steve gave him a cold stare-down, he spoke up once more, “He said to turn loose of him.”

“I’m not, so go home.” Steve said again, face like a stone. 

Another voice emerged from the crowd, “I swear to God, law dog, you step aside or we’ll tear you apart.” He was an older man with a scraggly beard, wiry hair to match his wiry nature, a dust-alden bandana hanging loosely off the skeleton-physique. He wielded his own weapon, pointing it at the Sheriff. He knew he was outnumbered, but wouldn’t back down. You wanted to cry out, to let them lynch Michael. Anything to avoid watching someone you care about die again. Anything to avoid feeling that. 

Steve took a step forward, pressing the barrel directly to the forehead of the old man. Hard enough for it to leave an indentation on the skin. 

“You die first, got it? Your friends might rush me later but not before I kill you first.” Steve’s eyes had hardened from something stone-cold to something ablaze. His eyes reaped the anger of the afternoon sun, alight with anger. Anger from defiance. Anger for Milt. “You understand me?” 

“He’s bluffing, let’s rush him” The younger man spoke up, further trying to entice the crowd. Everyone else was at a standstill, tension so taught, that if that wire snapped, it could recoil and kill both Steve and the other man. 

The old man’s eyes went wide, hands splayed out in a half surrender, half heeding motion, “No! He isn’t bluffing. Don’t rush him.” He pleaded, as if he were staring death in the face. By the look of rage and hunger alight behind Steve’s eyes, you were sure he was.

This time, the sheriff went quiet, talking only to the man in front of him, “You aren’t as stupid as you look. Now tell them to get back. “

“Go on, now, get back.” The old man said, hands still upward in surrender. The statement was shaking and quiet, unsure and teetering between tears. “Go on!” He said, louder this time, a plea for his life. 

“He’ll kill me.” He whispered, a single salty tear streaking through the fine layer of sand on his face. The crowd dissipated back, the yelling and demands of public execution coming to a gelatinous quiet. 

Edward removed his hand from your waist, putting the pistol from beneath his arm. He pulled the hammer back without question, pointing it at the young cattle-hand that started this all. 

“And you, big boy, you’re next.” He spoke it like a promise. Like a prayer. If you hadn’t been magnified by everyone's slightest move, you would have missed the way Steve’s eyes met you before he nodded in Edward’s direction.

+

The train comes by way of Texas Pacific that next morning, long before the break of dawn, and Eddie’s steamer trunk and horse were brought by means of Butterfield’s Overland as the sun was breaking darkness over the horizon. 

You don’t remember the sun turning over the next morning until you are blinded by the sudden onslaught of neon orange through the glass of the Whispering Sands. Your eyes feel dry, juxtaposed to the salty wetness of the rest of your face and the bottoms of your dresses, yet you kept scrubbing. 

That wretched spot in the middle of the floor that was beginning to divot from where the wood had worn away, yet you swore you could still see the dark coagulants of blood pooling between the grain. Maybe it was your own. 

There, where your husband lay dying, where his final breaths sputtered and choked from the blood that congealed within his lungs and escaped the gaping hole in his sternum. Where the unnamed bandolero lay already dead in your doorway, an iron barrel burning a vicious welt into your leg as your hands desperately plunged into the red pool forming within your husband’s chest. That night, the blood of two men covered your hands. 

The only evidence that anything had ever happened here was the mild divot on the floor and the blood seeping from your skinless knuckles and you scrubbed salt over the ghosts that resided between these floorboards and in these stools. You haunted this place in search of your husband, who would no longer be found at the piano or behind the bar. You were a ghost in your own rights. 

That holy shape becomes a devil, best. 

The laundry outside needs tending, and you let the burn from your knuckles tether you to this mortal plane, the unpleasant stick of your wet overcoat sticking ad unsticking from your knees and making them raw as you mundanely schlop wet clothes from the washbasin and pin them to the wire. 

You hear Edward round the corner, shrouded in the shadow from the smoky black quarter horse. Though quiet as they try, the equine presence is never quiet. He clears his throat haughtily, though you fail to recognize if it was him or the horse blowing a hefty breath through large nostrils. 

“Ma’am.” He started. Your nose was still red and your under eyes were still swollen from the night before, though, he hadn’t originally meant to say anything. Watching a man die was hard, he knew that you would have understood that. You looked like you had died and been resurrected when you turned to face him, hair frizzy and half escaping the braid that hadn’t been touched since the days before tucked beneath your hat, clothes sopping wet and hands bleeding. 

“What did you do to your hands?” He asked, suddenly softer now. He reached down to grab your hands, the sides of his calloused fingers scraping the undersides of your own calloused palms. 

“Tending to the floors.” You said to him, barely above a whisper. You wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

“You're soaked.” He observed, taking a step back to look down the front of your buckskin overskirts. Without a doubt, your underskirt and bloomers clung to your skin beneath as well, no longer dripping due to the warming sun. 

He understood what was happening here, the frantic nature in the way you scrubbed the floors matched the way he scrubbed his own body raw from the blood that covered his skin. He knew your hurt all too well. 

You mustered the courage to look him in the face as he inspected the outer edges of your knuckles with a tenderness that nearly brought the tears spilling back from your eyes. It was a tenderness that you hadn’t known in so long. It was like you were witnessing him from outside of your own body, through the eyes of a spider. You could count the smattering of freckles across his nose– those akin to a schoolboy, endearing in nature. A scar of what no longer remained. While he looked for signs of infection and wood shrapnel and remaining salt, you looked at the near perfection in which his thick lashes brushed from his lid to his cheek and you understood that God may not have been forgiving, but He certainly was real. 

A fluttering, frantic desire builds in your core when you slot your lips against his. This feeling was not akin to butterflies and moths. It was frantic, more persistent. Like that of the hummingbirds that drank from the cactus blossoms in the cooler mornings. You watched them in silence, searching and flying entirely too close. Fast and sure. All you can feel is the dry cracking against softness as his startled breath dissipates across your own mouth. 

“I’m sorry.” You mumbled to him, only pulling a mere few centimeters away. You were not sorry, but you were polite enough to fake it. 

“Don’t.”

He drops your hands, fingers scrambling for purchase against the tautness where your vest is slotted tight over your waist, clutching at fabric in search of skin instead. You reel closer, your own hat bumping the brim of his and falling off your head. It is frantic and sloppy and full of an animalistic reproach. The heat of his skin and lips is no different from the staleness of the desert around you. Your hands find his neck beneath his hair, tacky and slick with the sweat of the already blistering morning. You wanted him to touch you with all of the resolve of your dead lover, you wanted him to take you here in the sand– to make you shake and shiver all of the worries that had plagued you to the bone. To feel close to someone was foreboding, if you wanted to feel close you would have taken another lover. To feel safe with someone was something you clung to like a vice, for you hadn’t been safe since you’d started out west. You buzz like the fat hummingbirds in the saguaro blossoms when he hikes you close against him, aggressive without malaise. Both of his arms entrap you tightly, almost too tightly to be comfortable, and keeps a crushing weight to keep your body taught against his. You whine, all woman and all desperation, as your back braces against the rough stone texture of the brick behind you, his leg slotting between your thighs and casting a desperate friction to fruition. 

When you gyrate your hip against his thigh, unsparingly, the broad planes of his hands cling to the valley of your back between your shoulder blades relentlessly. It brings you up towards him instead of away against the wall. You can feel the harness of his braced between your bodies, and it sparks a churning feeling deep in the pit of your belly. You are whining, his tongue funding purchase within your mouth and making a home there. He does not expect you to initiate the act, but when your hands slide down the tautness of his abdomen, and pull his shirt out from his trousers, he is surprised. 

There is no sense of familiarity to this. Sure, you had been married. Laying with a man was no unexplored land for you, but this franticness, this panic and desperation was all new. It was risky, and it felt dirty, though, not incorrect. Edward reaches up, pulling the hat off of his head, his fingers turning tender against your waist as he guides you off of the wall and downwards into the sand. It is firm against your back and pleasantly warm. 

You are not soft like in his dream. You do not whine or beg for him when you see all of him for the first time. You are relentless in undoing your own buttons and pulling your own shirt off. When you see him, he is tall and lean, there is a scarecrow-like nature to him, the gangliness clinging to him like the naivety of youth, though, just as you were all woman, he was all man. Even in his softness. He is soft in the way he looks down at you, and allows your eyes to skim over him. His awestruck nature forces you to resist the urge to cover yourself. 

You are not womanly in the way you disregard the messiness of your hair, the tear streaks that stick against your hot cheeks, or the sand that sticks to your back as he lays you down. When he reaches a hand up to cup the side of your neck, it feels like walking that tightrope again– the one that teeters between the plane of life and death. This was a part of you that you no longer had resolve in. You did not think you would ever feel something that resembled your husband again. Though, as you walked this tightrope, it felt like crossing the threshold of your upstairs quarters again. His hands around you like a foundation and his arms around you like walls. 

There is a change of pace as he kisses you this time, unhurriedly and exploring. Your fingers grasp around the thick bone of his wrists, thumbs tethering you to the ligaments of his wrists beneath his alabaster skin. There remains a tackiness on the front of your body from where the lye water soaked through your clothes and stuck to your skin, though, he didn’t seem to mind. 

Behind the fast-paced nature and desperation of it all, there lies a sticky sweetness. Dark and slow-moving like molasses against your skin. It finds a resemblance in his lips against your neck that trail your collarbones. If it were a different circumstance, perhaps, this would have been slower. He would have taken you like a lover, something that more closely resembled the way he wanted you in the hazy fog of The Grand Hotel. But you needed him here and now, and he would have to give you that. 

He does not have to ease your legs open with reproach like he had to do with the other girls, the ones who hid themselves away in meek shyness. Even in the open expanse of the desert before you, where, on the opposite side of this building, the town was awake and beginning to stir, there was a profound lack of meekness to your demeanor. There would be no begging from your lips, though, you didn’t need to. You had him already. You had him as soon as you’d met him. 

He found himself tepid, “Do you still want me to–” 

“I want you to fuck me, Edward.” You’d insisted, and he was taken aback by it. Though, he was not going to deny you. Not with the sweat pooling between the valley on your breasts and your curls sticking to your forehead. He wouldn’t have denied you anyways. 

“Okay.” 

His voice was hoarse, moan rumbling low and deep from the confines of his lungs. He is rushed with feeling– taken aback by the crudeness of your language and comfort with your raw body. This was not what he had dreamed of, but rarely was it ever. The thrill changed quickly from an excited tingle to an aching need. His thumbs pull the hair from your face as he braces himself on his elbows, the soft smattering of hair on his stomach becoming flush with yours. 

You didn’t understand before the softness that lay just beneath the layer of dust that settles over him, the roundness to the apples of his cheeks or the plush of his lips. Though, now that he was this close, it was hard not to miss. His eyes, though you had only ever seen them dark and angry, were now a golden honey against the tan backdrop of the desert. It resembled the waning orange of the sunrise you were too forlorn to watch this morning. 

There was a resounding softness in his promises of, “I’ll take care of you” that reverberated with the building of tears that formed against his pretty lash line, though, not enough to break the surface tension and spill over his even prettier face. 

There is a relentlessness in the way he rocks his hips against your core, desperate for the feeling of closeness. A single tear buds against the corner of his eye, dripping down his pretty red cheek and on to your chest. You had half a mind to swipe it away with your thumb. He fucks you languidly in the building spring heat. The tackiness of your skin turns to a slide as he works you. 

His hips stutter in a pistoning motion, punching a moan out of your core that was not frilly or rehearsed. Please don’t stop’s resounding off of his chest like prayers. He is a little rougher than before, your back arching in pleasure. His voice is broken as he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to the column of your throat. 

There is a certain inevitability, like you both know that this will need to come to an abrupt end, and you whine with the filthiness of it all. There is a soft soreness that buds from within your core, and from the way he cries out, whiny and vulnerable, you know he feels it, too. There is a reciprocating cry that resounds from both your mouths, and you know he has reached his apex when he spills inside of you, moving slowly and then coming to a stop. 

You do not stop him when he drops a heavy head against your sternum, instead resulting in pushing the hair away from his face. His head bobs up and down on your chest as you breathe, his own falling out of sync with yours. There is a resounding whisper that leaves his lips, and you are not sure if you are meant to hear. You reply anyways. 

“Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.” “It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.”

[bettyeliana]

[rebelfell]

Something, something…outlaw!Eddie?

[medusapelagia]

14 The betrothal

written for @steddieangstyaugust (prompt: Lake), @augustwritingchallenge (Prompt: prince and princess ), @aug-kissed (prompt: Hand Kiss) Rating: Mature Relationship: Steve/Eddie TW: omegaverse, Omega Steve Harrington, Alpha Eddie Munson, Beta Robin Buckley, violence, blood and injuries, vomit Words: 1563

If Steve was a proper omega he wouldn't be on that stupid carriage, to be shipped from Loch Nora's Kingdom to Forest Park like an unwanted pack.

A proper omega would honor his family, stay home, cross-stitch animals and flowers, and learn poems and music. But Steve never was a proper omega and after he rejected his last suitor his father told him that he wasted his last opportunity to choose a proper alpha and that he was going to find one willing to take in a rebel omega like him.

Male omegas are a blessing and a curse: they are very rare, so Steve's father was able to ask for a high dowry from whoever wanted to marry him, but there weren't many alphas willing to tie their life to a male omega. 

Steve has heard talking about Forest Park. A lot. And never in a good way.

They have a very bad reputation, but they are rich, so Steve has no doubt that his father got a really good dowry for selling him to those people. Well, not selling, betrothing him.

Thankfully, Robin is coming with him. Moving from one Kingdom to another and being completely alone would have been terrible, at least his beta best friend is trying to make him laugh by making silly comments and distract him from the long journey.

Even if the carriage is big and cozy, spending hours sitting on a carriage isn't that comfortable, and Steve's royal ass is in pain.

He doesn't even have enough space to stretch his long legs because in the carriage with them, there are the two guards King Munson himself sent to escort the future bride.

The guards are heavily armed, as they were expecting something to happen, and Steve isn't totally surprised. After all, Forest Hill has a terrible reputation. Their King was an outlaw before he rebelled and became king by killing everyone and conquering the castle, so Steve isn't really looking forward to moving in the same bed with a notorious assassin. But it’s not his choice anymore.

Savages, that's the kindest word Steve’s mom used to define those people, while what everyone thought but none dared to speak out loud was that King Munson was the new Warlord.

A warlord. Not a high-born, just a man with enough power and money to hire the strongest knight and mercenaries to help him keep his power. And Steve is going to get married to a Warlord’s son, or nephew, he's not really sure. Bloodlines are mixed in their Kingdom and they don't give a fuck about dynasties and the only blood that they care about is the one the blood spit by their enemies.

Steve has heard terrible stories about how cruel and violent those people are. One of Steve's servants has told him that Prince Munson killed his first wife with his own hands because she wasn't too sick to give him a child.

Being a male omega Steve knows he can bear pups, even if his heats are irregular and it's harder for him than for other omegas, but he never thought that the ability to bear a child or not could have been the cause of his premature death.

His scent gets sour and acrid while he thinks about the monster that he's supposed to wed. Maybe he should have been more pliant with his previous suitor. Lord Hagan wasn’t that bad after all. A little bit too presumptuous for Steve’s taste but he doubts he would have had him killed if he wasn’t able to bear a child.

"You ok? Do you want to take a break? Stretch your legs a bit?" Robin proposes, drawing soothing circles with her thumb on Steve's hand.

"Yeah, that would be nice." He confirms, rubbing a hand through his hair.

"No break and no stretching. We are still in hostile territory." One of the guards replies without even looking at Steve.

"Couldn't we stop just for a moment?" Robin insists, "We have been on this stupid carriage for hours!"

But an arrow flying through the window and ending his journey a few inches from her face makes her shut up.

"Stay down!" One guard yells, yanking Steve toward the carriage’s floor so abruptly that he falls badly on his own wrist, spraining it, but he doesn't have time to yelp because the carriage stops in the middle of the woods.

"Stay inside!" The first guard yells, jumping out of the carriage and drawing his sword. For a moment Steve catches a glimpse of a bloodied body staring blankly at him with a long arrow in the one eye socket.

"It's ok. It's ok." Robin tries to soothe him, releasing beta relaxing pheromones, but the other guard stops her, complaining that he can't afford to get relaxed by her pheromones, so Steve and Robin hug each other, trying to hide themselves from the attackers.

"He's here!" Someone yells, kicking the carriage door open, but the second guard is quick to pierce the intruder from side to side, what he wasn't expecting was someone else opening the door on the opposite side and grabbing Steve with no kindness, yanking him by his hair.

Robin screams, reaching out toward Steve, the guard turns his head just for a moment and another attacker takes his chance to stab him in the leg while Robin keeps screaming, but the clenching of the metal armor is so loud that Steve almost can't hear her.

A strong hit on the back of his head makes everything turn a warm black and he loses consciousness.

***

When he opens his eyes, Steve is surprised to find himself resting with his back against a big oak tree. In front of him the bluest lake he ever saw.

He puts down his hand, trying to get up, but immediately desists when a bright pain makes him whimper.

"I would stay put if I were you. Your wrist is sprained and you took a nasty hit to the head. Are you feeling dizzy?"

Steve startles, looking around himself, and finally finds a tall man with dark eyes and a nasty scar on his face staring at him with an amused smile.

His kidnapper!

The omega tries to crawl backward, but the unknown man is right, his wrist hurts too much and he still feels lightheaded.

"I think I'm going to puke…" he mutters, before turning on his side and emptying his stomach on the green grass.

Surprisingly, his kidnapper is quickly at his side, holding his hair out of his face, whispering encouraging words while he holds him to his chest with one arm.

When Steve's body gets limp into the kidnapper's arms, he takes a moment to breathe in his scent.

Embers and earth.

An alpha.

A proper omega should never be left alone with an alpha who's not family!

Steve tries to wriggle out of the stranger's hold, but he gently chuckles and pushes Steve's neck closer to the scent gland on his neck, "You're fine, omega. Nothing to worry about."

"I'm betrothed." He objects in a soft voice, while the alpha pheromones make him pliant and docile.

"That's what you're worried about? your honor?" The unknown alpha chuckles. 

He has a nice laugh, Steve decided in his drugged state of mind, and he smells delicious. No other alpha ever smelled so good to him.

Steve must have said something because a very pleased rumble comes from the alpha's chest.

"You don't smell bad yourself, sweetheart." 

Steve should be ashamed of himself, but the alpha's sturdy body is holding him tight and for the first time in his life he feels safe in an alpha's embrace.

"That's good. Come on, sip some water for me to wash away that bad taste."

The omega prince doesn't really know if the alpha is using his alpha's voice, or if he's already scentdrunk or whatever, but the only thing he wants to do is obey this alpha.

Steve spits a few times to clean his mouth from the horrible taste and then drinks some water, while the alpha keeps holding him tight.

The man’s wearing a beaten armor, stained with blood, and for a moment Steve wonders if he will kill him, but the way he keeps holding him makes him think that he’s affected by Steve’s scent as he is from his.

They aren't left alone for long. When Steve turns his head someone is riding toward them. Too many people.

Steve turns toward the alpha with eyes wide with worry, "You have to go. My future husband will kill you. He's a warlord! He won't be pleased you kidnapped me!"

"Kidnapped?" The alpha asks, staring with confusion at the omega, feeling Steve's head with gentle fingers, "How badly did they hurt you, omega?" he asks worriedly, and this time is Steve's turn to frown in confusion.

“I might not look so but I’m a prince. And I was on my way to wed the Forest Park’s Warlord's son. If they catch you, they’ll kill you.”

Eddie bursts out in a loud laugh, shaking Steve who quietly complains of being jostled by the huge Alpha's body.

"Let me introduce myself," the alpha says, grabbing Steve's uninjured hand and kissing the palm of his hand in the most chivalrous way, "I'm Edward Munson, King Munson's nephew, your betrothal." 

[sidekick-hero]

he's all that I've got (don’t take that sinner from me)

(steddie | explicit | 8k | AO3)

“Edward Joseph Munson, 23 years old, 5’10, brown hair and eyes, was last seen at the borders of New Orleans, Louisiana, wearing black jeans and a black shirt. He’s been accused to have murdered Chrissy Cunningham, Patrick McKinney and Fred Benson in spring of 1986 and has been on the run ever since. He is probably armed and considered very dangerous. If you see him —”

Steve turns off the TV with a defeated sigh. Very dangerous, right. Well, he thinks, his smile had been dangerous, and his big brown doe eyes had been dangerous. His way with words, the joyful and uninhibited laughter. The way his hands cupped Steve's face and pressed into that sensitive spot where his ear meets his jaw had been dangerous too.

Steve had never stood a chance against him.

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

Steve is sweeping the floor after the last customer has left, happy to be done for the day, when he sees Nina, his co-worker, approaching. He considers hiding behind the shelves, not in the mood for her flirtatious chitchat. Not today. Seeing Eddie on the news still unsettles him, because it means he has been spotted. It's not safe. None of this is, but it makes it worse. It means he has to go deeper into hiding, where food and shelter may be harder to come by.

Selfishly, he also knows that it means the chances of him getting anywhere near Indiana anytime soon have just dropped below zero.

"Hey Steve, me and the girls were wondering if you would like to join us for an after-work drink at Oak and Alley? You've never spent any time with us outside of work, and we're starting to wonder if you don't like us." She pouts at him from under her long lashes, her delicate hand on his upper arm. In another life, he would have taken her up on what she so clearly laid out for him.

"Sorry, Nina, I already have plans for tonight. Maybe another time, yeah?"

Her hand drops back to her side. "Sure. Maybe another time. See you Monday, Steve." With that, she turns and walks to where Cynthia and Millie are waiting for her, purses in hand, ready to hit the town. Cynthia glares at him over Nina's head and he wonders how long it'll be before he has to find another job. He misses Robin, a fierce pang in his already battered heart.

Coming home around 8 p.m. on a Friday night, he kicks off his shoes and walks into his small kitchenette. He opens the freezer, pulls out a Stouffer's and puts it in the microwave, humming a Metallica song he heard on the radio earlier. While his food warms up, he changes into some sweatpants and turns on the TV, waiting for the obnoxious beep that signals his food is ready. When it's done, he settles back down on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table, and absentmindedly digs into his mediocre dinner. It's a familiar dance, as well-worn as the sweatpants he wears.

There's an old Western playing starring Clint Eastwood, but his mind is far away. Memories are the real ghosts, he has learned, not haunting places, but people.

He thinks of Eddie, as he almost always does. There aren't many memories to choose from, too little time spent together and too much time in between. Today, perhaps dislodged by seeing Eddie on the news, his mind replays the day he started living only half a life.

"I don't get it, Eddie. Why can't you let us help you?"

"Stevie, you know you can't. Hopper couldn't. Dr. Owens couldn't. They need a scapegoat and I'm the best they could find."

"Yeah, but they're not trying hard enough!" Steve's voice had broken, and he could still remember the way his heart had followed suit. "Maybe Nancy can —"

"Steve, please. I have no choice."

"Then take me with you."

"We both know that's not possible."

"Why? Why not? I could help you."

"You'd stick out like a sore thumb with that head of hair, sweetheart," Eddie had said, obviously trying to lighten the mood with a forced smile. He turned somber again when he looked into Steve's eyes and saw the tears swimming in them. He had stepped forward, right into Steve's space, taken him in his arms, and with his mouth pressed right against his ear, he had murmured, "You have people counting on you here. You can't just leave."

"Yeah, but you can?" Steve bit out, his face pressed against Eddie's neck.

"I have to."

READ THE REST ON AO3

This was first posted for @steddie-week here and turned into a full-fledged fic. Thank you to Captain Enabler @legitcookie, dangling writing catnip in front of my face on the daily. Love ya 💜

[momotonescreaming]

I went digging through my fics, and found this. Absolutely no idea when I wrote this, or if I shared it already, but I can't stop thinking about it. Enjoy.

It’s the 1800’s, and Steve is the first born and only son of Richard Harrington, heir to the Harrington fortune. Expectations have been placed upon him since he was born, and it only got worse as he got older. He was too kind, liked flowers, and playing in the mud, and learning about horses and carriages and trains, and sitting with his mother while she put on make up and had her ladies maid do her hair. Then came the lessons from the private tutor (since the Harrington’s were too good for the local school) and Steve wasn’t as book smart as his father wanted him to be.

His father was mean and his mother was scared and so Steve spent a lot of time out in the fields as a young boy, wandering the land his father owned, picking up sticks and pretending to be a sheriff or an adventurer riding a fast horse into the sunset.

So he played until it got dark and Steve still didn’t go back home. Dad would yell and Mom would give him That Look and he didn’t want to change into his fancy dinner clothes. So Steve stays out late and wanders.

There are things living in the woods.

Things with teeth that hunt and kill and make people disappear. But no one tells poor little Steve this. He gets attacked by a wolf that isn’t quite a wolf, and screams so so loud.

Nobody hears him.

One of his father’s farmhands find him in the woods in the early morning. His clothes are ripped and he’s dirty and covered in blood but he doesn’t have any wounds, save for one single wolf bite. The man rushes him back to the Harrington Manor House, and someone calls the doctor. Steve is bathed, and fed, and checked over and the doctor tells his parents that he’s lucky it wasn’t worse. He gets better and goes back to his lessons.

Next month he gets a fever. Steve is sweaty and delirious, and hungry and itchy and restless and nothing quite helps. He blacks out one night and when he wakes up he’s curled up on the hardwood floor and all his furniture has been ripped apart. The servants whisper the word “werewolf” in the halls.

His parents fire half the servants, pay them off to keep their mouth shut, and hire someone who can help. A friendly woman named Mrs Henderson, whose dead ex-husband was a werewolf like Steve. She teaches him what she can while Richard Harrington hires men to build a stone basement underneath a small cottage at the very back of the Harrington Land. Where no one can see.

So Steve grows up, he falls in love, he finds out his sweetheart Nancy doesn’t love him, he befriends Dustin Henderson, and then Robin Buckley - a  dorky local girl who plays the trumpet and works at a store in town. And once a month, he takes himself down to the basement of the cottage, and turns into a werewolf. Mrs Henderson could only help so much, not being a Werewolf herself. His control is better than it was, but he still doesn’t trust himself. So chained in the basement it is.

Then there’s Eddie Munson, the poor son of an outlaw living with his uncle in a tiny house in the town of Hawkins. Grew up learning how to break the law with his father, how to live off the land, how to shoot and hunt and survive. He hated it, little Eddie wanted to learn to play the guitar and read and tell stories. But Pa didn’t give him much of a choice. Until Ma died and Pa spiralled and ended up getting caught and shipped off to prison. So he went to live with his uncle Wayne. And he made friends, and told stories, and started writing.

And then he watched a girl die and got blamed for her murder. So he’s on the run, and he knows how to survive but not when he doesn’t have any supplies. And not in a town where everyone knows his name and his face. So he runs. And he hides. First in his friend Rick's, who’s away in jail or on a job or something. Eddie's not sure and he really doesn't care right now. But he gets close to getting caught again. So he runs again until he finds a barn, semi abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

He’s close to the Harrington’s land, this he knows. But everyone knows they travel for business all the time, so it’s fine.

Except it’s not.

He’s tired and hungry and scared and it’s dark. There’s a light in the distance - lantern. He ducks down, waiting. Except it’s not the Sheriff, or Jason Carver (who took it upon himself to become a bounty hunter, to avenge the death of his sweetheart). It’s Steve Harrington. The semi-estranged, semi-reclusive Harrington heir, who looks grim and angry as he storms across the field. And he doesn’t see Eddie, doesn’t look at the barn, doesn’t even have a horse.

Steve goes into the cottage and Eddie doesn’t know whether to stay put until he leaves in the morning or make a run for it. Eddie is still paralysed with fear and indecision when he notices the full moon in the sky.

He hears a guttural scream, the snap of bone, a howling; and Eddie remembers the stories his Uncle Wayne would tell him of the things that live in the woods.