#subtle steddie

[hannahbelleectere]

Details of the Eddie Munson costume because that's where the fun is.

[livwritesstuff]

Eddie has a serious problem.

A quagmire, perhaps, and it’s a real catch-22 of a situation too.

The problem really stems from how his and Steve’s third baby Hazel was born a few weeks earlier. 

The baby isn’t the problem, obviously.

It’s just…it is a truth universally acknowledged or whatever that men holding tiny little babies is hot as all hell even as a baseline. Factor in that the man in question is Steve Harrington, and then factor in that Hazel is their third baby so any nervousness has been completely eclipsed by an easy kind of confidence, and what you end up with is a level of hotness that really shouldn’t be allowed.

Also – Eddie forgot to mention, ever since Steve hit forty, he’s had the smallest hint of grey growing right at his temples and that isn’t helping things at all.

Eddie could eat him, honestly.

He really can’t believe the audacity of this guy for…just existing, really. Eddie can admit that all Steve is really guilty of is holding his infant daughter, but dear god what a crime that is.

Like, right now Steve is holding the baby against his chest with just one arm (and, seriously, the one arm thing is goddamn killing him, because it flexes his bicep in just the right way and Eddie would bite a chunk out of it if he could), the other midway through chucking a throw pillow at their oldest daughter for being a total monster about…well, Eddie would probably know what particular flavor of hell Moe is raising at the moment if he could take his eyes off of Steve for even a second.

But he can’t, so here they are.

Eddie also might be drifting off a little bit, and therein lies the catch-22 of it all –

It’s true that Steve is by far the hottest he’s ever been, but Eddie’s so tired that he couldn’t do anything about it even if he wanted to.

Actually – he’ll rephrase.

If he wasn’t so fucking tired, he’d be doing something about it. 

Immediately.

And, like, he has no fucking shame at all about this. Decorum and discretion, maybe, but shame? None whatsoever. 

Why should he?

It’s clearly the universe’s way of repaying him for all the shit it put him through as a teenager. Why the hell else would he not only be married to Steve, but also watching him fulfill his lifelong wish of becoming a dad three times over and aging like the finest of fine wines while he’s doing it. Eddie’s never even been a wine kind of guy, but when it’s Steve…obviously all bets are off.

Except, he's not being repaid in full, because there's the downside of having a newborn again – newborn babies don’t sleep. Well – she sleeps, but not when it’s convenient for Eddie and certainly not at the same time as his and Steve’s other two daughters. Plus, she’s proving herself to prefer contact naps over anything else, which Steve obviously loves, and…yeah, there’s a good few reasons why that shit doesn’t help Eddie’s situation at all.

Regardless, he hasn’t managed to sleep more than four straight hours at any point over the last three weeks, so any time he does have a child-free second to spare, that’s what he’s doing.

Steve notices him looking, because of course he does.

“What?” he asks, his voice low and quiet and a little tired and so so sexy.

“Oh, the things I’m doing to you in my head, Stevie-boy,” Eddie replies, (even though he knows he’ll be crashing the second his head hits the pillow – whenever the hell that ends up being).

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says even as he shifts Hazel so she’s cradled in the curve of his arm (because he’s a goddamn bastard and he knows exactly what he’s doing), “Put your money where your mouth is, babe.”

[kkpwnall]

i think he wants to be gentle with me

[stevieharringtonwifeguy]

witch eddie uses magical dice for dnd- not enchanted to always roll high bc that's cheating and he has too much Respect For The Game for that, but instead they're enchanted to always roll whatever's most Narratively Satisfying. like if his character has concluded their arc he rolls low on a death saving throw, if he's in a final fight with an enemy his character has had major beef with he always gets the final blow, stuff like that

and then when steve starts playing it seems like eddie's dice are on the fritz, bc they let steve get away with everything. every time steve tries to charm someone (which is basically every other interaction), he succeeds. eddie's character never rolls high enough insight to tell when steve's lying, even when the lie is so egregiously bad steve's rolling with disadvantage. they don't even seem to be narratively satisfying rolls, half the time theyre kind of bad or distracting to the story bc steve's still so new at the game he doesn't really have a feel for what he should be doing yet.

eddie checks the spell on his dice like five times and by all accounts it should be working fine. little does he know his crush on steve is so bad his magic has decided Steve Gets What Steve Wants without eddie even realising it

[helpimstuckposting]

I love the AUs where Corroded Coffin is famous and Steve is either a groupie or Tiktok star/model or whatever HOWEVER

I suggest to you: famous Corroded Coffin, and less famous but still popular Stobin indie band with Robin as main vocals. Their fans don’t cross, so Steve and Eddie slip in references to their relationship in the songs and no one notices. One day, Robin and Steve’s newest song goes viral on Tiktok and a CC fan notices it’s got a similar lyric pattern to the newest CC song so they make a mashup and???? The lyrics work like two halves of one song?? Is anyone else hearing this???? So theories blow up in the comments and half the listeners think it’s just a coincidence but the other half think that’s impossible and it’s gotta be on purpose but why would a metal band and a small indie band do a collab like that?

Conspiracy redditors and tiktokers start connecting some of the other songs together but no one can figure out why because Eddie is openly gay so there’s no way he and Robin are together so why are all these connected songs about love? Who are they talking about?

It takes MONTHS for people to realize Robin isn’t listed as a songwriter for any of the connected songs, but someone named Wayne Hawkins is and Corroded Coffin lists someone named S Henderson and they’ve GOT to be pseudonyms

Eddie and Steve have so much fun following fan theories that they don’t bother telling anyone they’re dating just to see how long it takes for people to figure everything out. The mystery makes both bands skyrocket in popularity

—

This post comes with a fic now

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

from this prompt list (send me some if you'd like!) prompt #s 35, and 82

pairing: steddie | word count: 819 | rated: M (just in case!)

“Ah, fuck!” Eddie pants, finally letting go and dropping his weight into Steve’s capable hands.

Steve lets the other man catch his breath, running his hand up and down Eddie’s bicep in a soothing motion.

“You’re doing great, Eds, that was fucking perfect.”

Eddie looks up at him, mouth still hanging open though his breath is finally slowing.

“This is a one-time thing, you know.” Steve says.

“Fuck you.” Eddie heaves out, finally catching the last of his breath.

Steve chuckles at him, “Well, it is! I told you you’ve only got to try it once.” He moves his hand from Eddie’s bicep to pat the scraggly bun on top of his head sympathetically.

“Stop laughing at me, asshole.”

“I’m not! I’m not,” Steve laughs, “Well, okay, yes, I am–but!--it’s only ‘cause I love how irritated you get.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, “Shut up, Harrington, just pass me the fuckin’ weights.” 

Steve smiles as Eddie lays back onto the bench in a huff. “You think you’ll get up to 25s by the end of the month, or are you gonna stick with 20s all year?”

“If you keep making fun of me, I’m gonna bench the 5s. Now pass them over; I gotta get this done ASAP.”

“Oh do you now?” Steve asks, coaxing his boyfriend to sit back up so he can take the weights properly. 

Eddie takes the free weights and lays back down, holding them over his head for another set of presses. “Yeah, duh. The faster I’m done, the faster I get to see you do yours.”

“You got a thing for jocks or something, Munson?”

Eddie’s starting to huff again, finishing off rep seven of ten.

“You know I do, sweetheart.” he grits out, pressing out the last one; he sits up and drops the weights to rest on his knees. “Pretty boy muscleheads lifting 70 fucking pounds over their head at once really gets me going.”

Eddie’s not lying either, he’s been giving Steve the eyes the whole time they’ve been in this gym, and it’s NOT helping Steve’s concentration.

Steve does his warm-up jog on the treadmill? Eddie gives him the eyes.

Steve manages to do a full set of reps with 35s instead of 30s? Eddie gives him the eyes.

Steve loads up the leg press machine, eyes. Actually does leg presses, eyes.

Eddie sets the dumbbells on the floor and stands so Steve can take his place on the bench.

“You’re insatiable.” Steve gumbles, hefting his own weights (still 35lbs each!!) onto his legs so he can push them up properly with his knees and lay back for his presses.

“And I can’t wait for you to saiche me when we get home.” he says, relishing in the fact that he made Steve laugh in the middle of his last rep.

“Don’t do that, asshole! I coulda dropped this thing on my face!” 

They swap spots once more, Eddie finishing his last set on the bench, then Steve starts talking him through the next exercise.

“Okay Eds, you’re gonna stand up for this one. Make sure you’re standing straight, take one weight in your hands by one of the ends like this,” he cups one bell of the dumbbell in both his upturned palms, “and go behind your head with it, palms up.

“Then, all you have to do is push the weight up toward the ceiling and back. Got it?”

He demonstrates, both arms stretched up and bent at the elbow to let the weight hang from his hands behind his shoulders. The stretch causes Steve’s shirt to ride up, leaving a sliver of his soft stomach bared, the muscles at the back of Steve’s upper arms (He told Eddie the correct term for them before, as if he was going to remember that..) bunch and stretch with each movement…and Eddie immediately wants to climb him like a tree.

“Eds, you got that?” his boyfriend says, sounding slightly out of breath as he continues to press his weight above his head.

“Steve.” Eddie breathes out.

Steve keeps going, concentrating on his movements.

Eddie tries again, “Stevie, darling. Either you need to stop. Or we need to leave.” 

“What?” he stops, carefully moving the weight back to his front and putting down onto the bench beside them. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” How could he not? Does he not know how he looks right now??

Eddie feels his cheeks flush hotter as Steve searches his face, his eyes dropping down.

“Oh—oh yep, yep, okay, lemme just–” Steve wastes no time re-racking their weights and grabbing a spray bottle of disinfectant and paper towel to clean off the bench they were using.

“C’mon, lets go,” he says in a low voice as he pulls Eddie by the hand out the door to their car, “You’re lucky you’re cute,”

Eddie only grins, letting himself be towed along.

my husband gave me these numbers! so this is based on my own love for my husband and his strong arms and shoulders that make me 🥵 when i go to the gym with him lolol

[flowercrowngods]

i'm just gonna write a quick thing is always such a scam bc i'll be 3.5k words in and the Thing hasn't even started yet (and still i'm surprised every time smh)

[youwillfindilluminating]

not to be the corniest woman alive, but I did order steve's "hawkins phys-ed" shirt and when it arrived you better believe I put it right next to eddie's hellfire club shirt, brokeback mountain style

[xenon-demon]

I fucking love pretty much every version of the “celebrity x Just Some Guy™” trope that there is for Steddie, but in honor of having a totally reasonable amount of wine I’m going to tell you about the version I’m currently thinking about all the time, one of my dumbest yet also funniest AU concepts: modern!AU with streamers Steve & Robin and Hardcore Fan™ Eddie who writes reader-insert fic about Steve.

Steve and Robin, aka EvenStevens and BirdBox_ on Twitch (“My name is spelled with a P-H, Robin, that’s such a stupid name.” “No, it’s actually even better this way! You don’t want to just use your real government name for something like this, and you would just make your username ‘SteveHarrington01′ or something equally uninspired-”) frequently stream together and have a shared YouTube channel. They got popular doing reaction videos that quickly devolve into the pair of them bickering on camera, and since the internet just loves the ‘snarky woman and her emotional support himbo’ dynamic, they got very big, very quick. Plus, it certainly doesn’t hurt that they had the combined might of Dustin and Erica to help them bend the algorithm to their whims.

While most people recognize their platonic-with-a-capital-P soulmatism, there are still some that are convinced they’re secretly dating - they can’t decide if it’s hilarious or absolutely maddening that every time they try to disprove the rumors, they somehow get stronger. Robin doesn’t feel comfortable coming out to the internet yet, and without that trump card some people just can’t understand why they’re not dating.

...there are other sections of their fandom, however, that absolutely do believe they’re not dating. Mainly because they’d rather be dating Steve or Robin (or both!) themselves, and write all the reader-insert fanfiction you could ever possibly need about it. Robin is largely ambivalent to the concept of fanfiction being written about herself as long as they’re not writing smut, since at least that way they’re not insisting she’s dating Steve.

Steve on the other hand finds it absolutely hilarious how despite how much he’s changed, he’s back to being the heartthrob he used to be in high school - and, he’ll be honest, he thrives on the attention. He’s given everyone the green light to write whatever they want - dared them to make it raunchier, even - to the point where it’s a running joke that Steve will read your reader-insert fanfiction about him unless you tag it with some form of ‘Steve don’t look’. He even used the prevalence of fic about himself to come out on stream.

(Steve’s in the middle of re-organizing his flower field in Animal Crossing when he’s interrupted by a donation. “Hey Steve, really sorry to tell you this but people are writing porn about you... and they’re making it gay. Like writing about you getting fucked by a dude. Just wanted you to know so you can say something about it.”

Steve stops dead, his screen freezing on his open inventory. “Hey, uh, why the fuck would I have a problem about a fictional version of me bottoming? Or- wait, do I seriously give off homophobic vibes? I’m literally bisexual. Hey Dustin, can you ban that guy please? Christ, the nerve of some people. If that’s how you feel about people being gay, or about people writing things that I’ve already said I have no problem with, you can leave this stream right now because I don’t want you here.“)

Many people lost their minds after that stream, one of them being popular tumblr blog whorefireclub.

Eddie didn’t plan on starting a tumblr blog for self-insert fanfiction about a twitch streamer. Really he didn’t, and every time he thinks about it in terms that plain he kind of dies a little on the inside. It’s really all Gareth’s fault, for getting fed up with Eddie’s dumb parasocial crush on a streamer and daring him to just “get it out of his system already”. So, using a bare-bones anonymous tumblr and many, many beers as his cover story, Eddie posted some of the most quickly written and unedited pieces of writing he’s ever produced in his life.

Except he wrote it with an AMAB reader character - and for those of you unfamiliar with the reader-insert sphere, that’s like fucking hen’s teeth. People are pretty good at making things gender neutral at least in their descriptions, and sometimes the anatomy is vague enough that it’s ambiguous, but the majority is written with AFAB genitalia for the reader character.

Eddie’s little drunken post blows up, and at first, he’s never regretted a life choice more.

After thinking about it, and seeing just how many people left comments with their reblogs or came into his askbox directly to thank him for giving them the representation they wanted, he starts to feel a bit better about the whole thing. In fact, it kind of tickles his “protector of the outcasts” instincts; there are people who can’t enjoy the content they want to because it doesn’t gel with their anatomy or gender identity. Eddie could, hypothetically, if he wanted to be absolutely insane about this one hot streamer guy, help fix that problem somewhat.

A couple of months later and he’s become “the guy who writes inclusive reader-insert fic”. While a fair amount of his work is gender-ambiguous, both in anatomy and in avoiding gendered language, more than half is written for anyone who finds themselves underrepresented in the usual reader-insert scene; anyone AMAB, AFAB people who can’t do female language, he’s even written a few oneshots with intersex reader characters. He did research for it and everything. It’s certainly not how he planned for this to work out, but it’s actually kind of... nice. He’d written a lot of fanfiction in his youth, mainly about Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, and while this isn’t how he’d imagined returning to the hobby it’s actually really fun. (It’s making his celebrity crush on Steve a million times worse, of course, but he’s in denial about that so it’s totally fine.)

He’s a little shit, so his blog header has - underneath his personal details - a PSA that reads “Steve, don’t look at this unless you have the balls to shout me out on stream ;)”. Eddie thinks he’s absolutely hilarious.

Right up until he wakes up to find his following has exploded overnight, and upon checking his DMs from his mutuals realizes that - oh shit - that bastard actually did it and talked about his blog on stream.

And Steve said he liked it. Steve likes the porn that Eddie wrote about him. Jesus H. Christ, Eddie is so unfathomably fucked.

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

if this were to exist as a fic it would be told through social media posts/DMs. one of those fics that uses unconventional (i.e. non-prose) formatting, you know the ones. the concept actually came from the fact I fucking LOVE fics like that, I’m a slut for any of that House of Leaves-type shit. one time I read a fic that consisted of 8 short stories and each one had a HTML puzzle you had to solve to be able to read it, e.g. one you had to highlight because the text was in white, another you needed to hover your mouse over to make it scroll through the text - I can’t remember the rest but it was SO COOL.

(or, to put this another way, I read homestuck at a formative age and it forever changed how I feel about formatting stories.)

[lumaxramblings]

fruity four is like "STEDDIE!!! oh well and yeah steve's lesbian sidekicks I guess"

YUUUUPPP.

and i mean. we're used to that with robin unfortunately (she's been fulfilling the spot as steve's gay mentor in many people's hornygrove's fanfictions :/) and that's frustrating in and of itself (according to rr, she's literally JUST found out she's a lesbian a year or so ago and has told exactly One person. girl she wouldn't know what bisexuality is) but it's also very frustrating w nancy

because many fruity four enjoyers don't even like nancy. and/or don't include her in general with fruity four and only ever talk about eddie, robin and steve. they either hate her for "breaking steve's heart" in s2 (steve hurt her more than she ever hurt him. Btw) or they just don't include her because, maybe subconsciously, she isn't "queer enough" for them.

n that last one is it's own can of worms but it's just so fascinating to me how they consistently treat ronance, robin, and nancy like shit, all in different ways. it's like. they were tryna speedrun the "how badly can you treat female characters" speedrun

[weezardthewizard]

This is me offering up my services as a Midwesterner to beta read for steddie fics. Basic editing plus slang, idioms, cultural stuff, generic brands, etc. If you're a perfectionist from out of the region and you want immersion, hit me up

[livwritesstuff]

It’s uncharacteristically warm outside for late-winter in Hawkins, Indiana.

It’s 2004, and the whole entire Party is back in Hawkins to celebrate Jim and Joyce’s fifteenth wedding anniversary (it’s actually closer to their sixteenth by now, but they’ve all well and truly entered that phase of adulthood where planning things is next to impossible), and it’s the first time they’ve all been in one room since…honestly, Steve doesn’t even know when. Since Lucas’s wedding in ‘99, maybe.

Everyone is inside unwinding after dinner. Steve can hear them from where he’s sitting outside on the front deck gently rocking the porch swing Hop had installed years ago with one foot, a now-empty bottle resting on the unfinished pine floor by the other.

The front door of Jim and Joyce’s house quietly opens and Steve looks over as El steps onto the porch, closing the door behind her as soft as she’d opened it.

She pauses, her eyes turning wary as they slide off of him and onto the baby girl drifting asleep in his arms (his and Eddie’s littlest baby, Robbie – the older baby, Moe, who’s nearly three so not really a baby anymore, is inside still probably being doted on by all her aunts and uncles).

Even in her early thirties there are so many ways El is still just like the little kid Steve met back in 1984. At the same time though, she’s completely changed.

“Doin’ okay, Ellie?” he asks gently.

She nods.

“It’s getting loud,” El tells him, “Someone put on Jeopardy.” 

Yeah, that’ll do it these days – older and wiser they may all be, but any kind of trivia is still a vice for pretty much the entire Party.

“Well, you’re welcome to join us out here for as long as you like,” Steve replies.

He knows El is a little apprehensive around babies still, same as she is with cats and puppies – really anything small and vulnerable that might have been used against her many years ago, so he half-expects her to go back inside.

But she comes over and sits down next to him on the porch swing anyway and for a while, both of them are quiet.

Robbie exhales a satisfied snuffling noise that tells Steve she’s well and truly asleep.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees El’s hand twitch, like she was going to raise it but then stopped herself.

“Can I?” she asks tentatively.

“‘Course,” Steve tells her, and he watches as El runs the tips of her fingers over the wisps of soft hair on Robbie’s head.

“How old is she now?”

“Three months,” he replies, “Four in a week or so.”

“And she’s…she’s doing…good?” she asks, and there’s something so El in her tone, the same tone she always uses when she’s tip-toeing her way through something that, to her, is foreign territory.

“Mm-hm. She’s good.”

El nods.

“Your daughters are lucky,” she says, her brown eyes trained wistfully on Robbie even as she pulls her hand away. 

Steve thinks he knows what she’s getting at, but before he can ask, she keeps going.

“She’s gonna live her whole life never having to wonder if she’s loved or if she matters,” El says, “She won’t have to wonder because it’s always true. That’s special. I love Hop, and everything I have that is good is because of him, but…I still wish I could have had what you and Eddie are giving her too.”

And Steve knows exactly what she means because he feels the same way, because he thinks about it all the time, every time he thinks about his daughters and the way they are his entire world like he should have been to his own parents and yet never was, every time he thinks about himself and his father and his father’s father and knows it ends with him.

He’s not sure how to put any of that into words.

It’s El though, and he’s never really had to put those kinds of things into words with El, so he decides to just nod and settle back into the porch swing with his friend at his side and his daughter asleep in his arms and the faint noise of the people he loves most carried over them on the breeze of a warm winter evening.

[coldgpa]

I love that here hes like omg yes will let me lay my head on your chest and breathe u in but in the fourth season hes like naw man I cant hug u at that airport that shits gay man

[piratefishmama]

Eddie in his late forties getting so sucked into Candy Crush that Steve has to hide his phone just so CC can get songs recorded.

[byler-alarmist]

gotDAMN 4x07 is such a treasure trove of Steddie. I only see people talk about the vest or the woods scene, but actually some of the best hints come LATER in the episode, and you have to be paying attention to catch them.

I'm going to have to reopen my side blog just to dish about the crumbs I keep finding

[redlegumes]

@melonalemonade 's Master of Puppet Eddie and subvvaytovenus' Steve with star pants

It's so beyond late but I think I'm ready to post these boys

When I tell you I debated Steve's butt size for so so long

Zoom for body hair :p

Butts close up