#steddievalentinesexchange

[hitlikehammers]

dearest-mine (until next)

a Fae-King!Steve/Human-Prince!Eddie fic for @thequeenofcarvenstone in the Steddie Valentine's Day Exchange ✨ ao3 link here

part i: until next

“Dearest,” Steve whispers gentle, ever-so, against the hidden space behind his beloved’s ear; “dearest-mine,” he exhales as a song, lilting; tender if not wholly devoid of the barest sorrow as he rouses his lover before the dawn as he must: “until next.”

With which he wakes his dearest, his Eddie, every morning he is blessed to spend wrapped around and within: he will not bid farewell, the parting already too raw; he cannot bear the heartbreak of permanence etched in harsher words. And yet: part they must; fae magic is firm.

The morning light seals the liminal space to solid. To remain beyond the dawn means to remain forever.

“What if I were to stay?”

Eddie’s voice comes itself like a song, though the words more a temptress; as if he hears Steve’s own thoughts tucked deep in his chest.

“You know you mustn’t,” Steve says it as he says it every morning, swallowing his own regrets and wishes deeper than his thoughts as he strokes fingertips delicate through his beloved’s hair, soft without need for Enchantment’s touch; “you have a kingdom which depends upon your kind hand in guidance,” and it is true: his beloved stands to inherit rule of the kingdom that curls east-and-north to the borders of Steve’s Realm, should the Realm be given space within the mortal plane. It is how they met, fortuitous by the hands of chance to other eyes but Steve: Steve believes otherwise.

He believed in destiny only for the fact of Eddie beside him; that after millennia now of feeling only passing warmth within him, and surface satisfaction of the flesh, he aches in perpetuity, now, for the expanse beneath his breast, the way Eddie sits on a wholly other throne beside Steve’s heart: Steve has lived and breathed beside Enchantment his entire life-length, and will for what remains, but he has never had reason to ponder and marvel at the true extent of its powers before this.

Infatuation is a lesser word by leagues, and yet: love too is so far beyond this feeling.

Though, for the immediacy of feeling: Steve stills when the touch of his lover slips lower, his lashes dancing, the blood high on the sculpt of his cheekbones.

“I believe,” Eddie whispers, near-devious: “my kind hand,” he echoes Steve’s words in a wholly other fashion, and Steve feels the desire that never fades with his beloved, he feels it stir to rising, to sprinkle the flesh of him up from the ends: “may better be suited to,” and he lays a palm at the join of Steve’s hips, lets the weight of his touch settles meaningfully, warm where heat is no matter, Steve already walks an inferno beside him:

“Other tasks.”

Steve’s blood whirls riotous between the chambers of his chest, a dancing ribbon on Lughnasadh in the blood of him, the life of him celebratory and yet—

“Darling-mine,” he forces his own hand to cover Eddie’s, and laments the way his fingers curl to lift that hand to his chest to feel the hum there, not-quite-human but not so unlike, simply broader, less predicable and more married to the whims of the World-Rhythm, and here beside his One-True—though he has not spoken such, and will not for the unbalance of thus speaking clear his own heart, should he stumble into tempting Eddie to move in kind; for where no consequence lies for Steve to bare his love within his own borders, for Eddie it would tempt Enchantments older than even Steve can fathom, laid by the crueler of his cousins long gone from these lands though the roots, the soils retain the memory, and deeper-still the danger. Yet Steve has known for some time the gravity of what he feels, of what this truly is—

“Your nation lays its demands upon you by daylight,” he presses lips against his beloved’s jaw, holds to feel his lifeblood and smile there for the fact of it: “my heart remains forever at the ready for your return by evenfall.”

For this is how it is, for them; this is how their worlds must spin: there is no more, and no less, nor should there ever be, for to quantify it on any scale, human or Deeper, is folly, and ill-fitted. What they are is this, in its unquakable wholeness. It can be no other.

“I miss you terribly in the interim,” Eddie says, the soft heart of him in his eyes as he confesses the depth of this in simple words that cut every time, that clench in Steve’s chest and make him wish…

Make him wish things he cannot wish. Eddie is a Prince, with a Kingdom that will await his ascension in due course. Eddie is a human, a beautiful mortal soul, perfect for all that he is and ever will be, just so. Steve could barely hold the notion of asking someone to forsake their homes, their lands, their families and peoples to join the world he reigns over: he cannot ask this man, the only one he would desire to pose the question, not when he holds in him a greatness of his own that Steve cannot presume to measure to, no matter what titles or powers he himself might offer in exchange.

“I misspoke,” Steve settles on, and draws Eddie’s hand to his lips to kiss soft, then his chest to press true: “my heart does not wait at the ready,” he breathes, and lets Enchantment swell in his veins to be felt and held for the touch:

“It goes with you, always, whole-of-my-heart,” Steve exhales the vow of it, the love of it, careful but long-kept and nurtured to be open, always, and wholly but safe, held mindful and meticulous and offered so as to have none of the ties of Fae-Kind that may sway Eddie’s mind, or his heart; that would unfairly, and unmeaning, ask for things Steve will not ask, sacrifices he will not so much as hint toward Eddie considering, no matter the outsized wanting within him.

“So there is no need for longing in these hours,” Steve breathes out, and wills the weight of what he gives between them swell with breadth and feeling, as he’s practiced long to master so that it skirts all wiles of his Winter brethren, and even his own sun-soaked kin—a magic here without twists save to hold as dear; an oath sworn that asks nothing in return: “never a need, dearest-mine, however long those mournful hours may deem fit to stretch.”

Eddie considers him, lips parted as he breathes in the warmth of evocation Steve is gifting into the space between them, with every exhale and pulse-flutter: the flush high on his beloved’s cheeks for it is all he asks for, if not all he desires—if he cannot claim the latter, he will treasure the former with all that he is.

“Impossible, though,” Eddie finally exhales, thready and awed as he slowly turns their twined-together hands and brings Steve’s to his own chest, now: there is no Enchantment singing beneath his breast save for the fact and marvel of him, but that could never mean it’s less a song, and Steve craves it wholly, the wing-beat of it so untethered, so free—Steve relishes it with his full being, even for the reminder that in its freedom, it is proof pressed into his hand of what he can never, will never even hint at mentioning, to choose and tot bind and to join Steve here but to lose far more: he will never so much as suggest the notion, lest his resolve crumble, or the worst of his nature take selfish tacks to keep.

“I leave my heart with you,” Eddie murmurs, and leans to rub his cheek to Steve’s, the gentle prickle of scruff delicious on Steve’s soft skin. “I question often, whether it remembers still how to beat without you near,” Eddie breathes as a confession and Steve own heart trembles for it, to be cared for so deeply in kind: a revelation. Novel beyond his ken.

“It is well-done then,” Steve can only whisper back, just as delicate; cannot break the gentle spell cast wholly of they two alone, and the beating of life between them, Steve’s for Eddie and Eddie’s…possible some proportion of him, too, for Steve: unfathomable—and yet.

“Of course there is not life without a heart,” Steve mouths now against Eddie’s jaw, soft and tender until he raises shivering; delicious; “and yet we endure through the cold hours,” and he fastens his mouth then to the delightful pump of the pulse at Eddie’s throat, a buoyant little wave of feeling: “safe in hand of hearts given,” Steve kisses there reverent and breathes: “happily so.”

“Joyfully so,” Eddie counters, reaching then to cup Steve’s face and meet his eyes with such weight in their fathomless gaze:

“You are dear to me in ways I never dared to dream,” Eddie tells him with his full chest, uncannily breathless for the strength he holds inside the sentiment, audible and tangible in the air as he speaks and it fills Steve to bursting just to be privy to it, let alone to be the intended recipient of such unutterable gifts.

“Take this then, beloved,” and Steve kisses him thoroughly, with all intention and his own choice gifts: “and be well in your journey.”

Eddie raises a brow at him, his lips quirking impish.

“What was it this time, then?”

And Steve meets him, smiling warm where he could not resist if he tried, and would not dishonor this moment or the depth of it all in his chest to make such attempts—of course his beloved has learned the sensation, now, of Enchantment working upon him, even in bare hints.

“Simply safe-keeping,” Steve smooths hands down Eddie’s arms, and kisses his lower lip so to coax the flesh just so into full-dark bloom: “it would do poorly should I fail to protect my heart in its travelings,” he adds playfully, though it may shoot afar its mark: too sincere, too much of heart in it by necessity alone.

“And?” Eddie forgives whatever undue weight Steve may have let dampen the tease, or else maybe he simply accepts it for all that it is; but he moves onward, and presses further—so bright, his dearest, so keen.

“Subtle fortune,” Steve admits, gathering his hands to hold, to squeeze: “your negotiations today,” for they had spoken: Eddie’s Kingdom seeks trade and alliance with their neighbors at the furthest reaching leyn-lines of Steve’s borders, and Steve would see it done for the best of both his own people, and Eddie’s in turn—though he would see it done no matter, were it Eddie’s wish.

“My uncle needs that more than I,” Eddie shrugs the sentiment a bit but pinkens, ducks his head and buries in the fluff of his curls, sleep mussed and wild and adored.

“Beloved-mine,” Steve feels himself compelled from the heart of him to speak it, to counter the hiding, however endearing; to banish so much as the hint of feeling less-than deserving, contexts aside, not least as the deep-dark of the sky starts to soften with bare hints of amber, their moments dwindling:

“You carry the whole of me as companion,” Steve frames his face and speaks true, feels the welling of his devotion, the depth of how much of himself is offered in his touch and in his words, and he suspects his eyes flash opalescent for the way it trembles as truth through his skin to bone, the whisperings of the Elders ebullient in his voice as he speaks: “and yet that is a trifling thing compared to the whole of you.”

Eddie stares at him as if he is a wonder, a true child of something rooted deep in the movings of being, in the seasons of the world and the glories no longer spoken aloud as the tongues are long lost but life on in the flesh of those like Steve, and that is a truth: but here. Here, before Eddie, next to Eddie, Steve is really but one thing alone: his.

Steve belongs solely and wholly, here, to him.

“You speak nonsense, my liege,” Eddie finally murmurs, eyes still stretched almost unfathomably wide, as if seeing Beyond: “of us two I am the one who wakes in your arms and wonders endless what heaven I’ve stumbled upon,” he reaches to cradle Steve’s face much as Steve had done in turn, and Steve has never learned before this man to feel adored, or valued for what he is, for who he’s grown to be, rather than what influence he wields, and what power he can enact, as if his rapport now with Enchantment is some coercive thing: no. No, Eddie sees Steve, not a King, not a Fae, not a means to an end. And the strength of his feeling is somehow palpable through the leaves, on the wind itself: for Steve alone, just as he is.

It is a heady revelation that has never yet grown old, or less miraculous.

“To be so blessed as to behold you,” Eddie toys idly at his hair with the softest curve to his lips, his pulse strong, full at his neck; “let alone—“ and his voice breaks a little for feeling, and Steve chest cracks open a touch to take it in safe, to wrap it around his own heart and covet it close, gifts-upon-gifts.

“Now who speaks nonsense, dearest-mine,” Steve teases, though he knows his eyes still glow with the world-craft of his birthing, its power awakened to press firm the truths deeper than his words: this man is all things, in Steve’s chest and in his blood and of his soul he is all things; “what wild notions you have, to think you are less the revelation,” he chides, and flips a thick tangle of Eddie’s hair to puncture the point before he leans close, catches Eddie’s hand again close to his chest to measure the significant in moments’-moving blood beneath:

“That you are less my heart entire.”

Truths. May well have been drawn in the roots of the world-tree at creation itself. And Eddie looks at him in such a way that he must, he must feel grasped and held to Steve’s heart under his palm, for the leaping and the drumming-divine that takes up its song through his chest as Eddie licks his lips and looks to Steve like he is unfathomable and immutable, like he is everything there is to be somehow; his eyes gleam bright and his lips part slow, near-worshipful:

“I love—“

And Steve leans to kiss him, to claim his lips and still his words, to keep them inside his lungs and deep near his heart because as much as Steve wishes them, he wishes nothing of what they may bind to, what they may be taken by Enchantment to mean: a debt. A claim. All that Steve strives with the whole of him to keep his dear one safe from: the dangerous edges that are axiomatic to all Fae is varied in their shape and magnitude; edges Eddie skirts by his nature, so fond of the risk to the point that it pricks often in Steve chest for fear, even as he knows he will never live to let harm visit upon this man, not a single curl upon his head will come to hurt under Steve’s eye, but this: this is not a mere hurt.

This is a sentence for all of time; a condemnation underscore in terms beyond forever. And he will not subject Eddie to such ruin; he would not leave such ends to this man who never needed to stake claim upon Steve to have the whole of him.

And Steve will never risk stealing the claim of eternity in return, no matter how his heart longs to hear those words.

“Sunlight hastens,” Steve moves his lips against Eddie’s; breathes protection into him soft so that he knows love in the motion, but caution in what Steve has sealed back into his lungs: safe and unspoken, risking none of the radiant humanity in Eddie’s precious veins as he cups that dear-held cheek:

“Hasten in kind, beloved.”

Until next, indeed.

✨ part ii: here✨

✨ ao3 link here

permanent tag list (comment to be added): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson

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