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formosusiniquis · 2 years

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When Mike Wheeler, red faced and still faintly tear stained, asks him how he knew he liked both Steve doesn’t know how to tell him it was his sister.

Before Nancy Wheeler it had only been boys. Before Nancy Wheeler Steve had been sure he was gay and knew well enough to keep it to himself; dating around enough to earn himself a protective reputation. Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been Marcus Summers, from the baseball team, during freshman year. Steve had gone to every game, and had been forced to make up excuses about schoolwork and his other commitments when asked why he hadn’t tried out for himself. Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been Tommy Hagan. The summer between seventh and eighth grade had been very kind to Tommy, he was sunkissed and boy next door sweet, Steve had wanted to hold his hand and count the freckles across the bridge of his nose.

Before Nancy Wheeler there’d been his first love, a boy who only visited one summer, the year Steve turned ten. His name had changed every time they hung out but he’d favored E’s. Eli, Emmett, Elliott, Eric, Excalibur, Excelsior, and once for about an hour Wayne. His hair brushed his chin in pretty brown curls and his big brown eyes were always bright with excitement. He always got storm off mad when any of the other boys they’d played with that summer said he was acting like a girl, E would run off to the woods and Steve would always follow. E always came up with the best games anyway, he didn’t like playing soccer or HORSE or anything else with rules that couldn’t be bent; he preferred imagination games where they were knights or wizards. He didn’t laugh when Steve said he always liked playing house, but never wanted to be the dad because why would he want to be someone who never wanted to spend any time with his kids. E who, while insisting on being called Samwise all day, was his first kiss.

Cause he knows what Mike wants to hear. He’s seen the way Mike and Will have danced around each other since the last portal closed. He’s heard the things Mike has said to and about Will. He’s heard all about the week that Will was in the Upside Down. He’s heard all about the summer of ‘85. He’s heard all about the final off again that seems to officially mark the end of Mike and El romantically. He knows that Mike wants him to say that he’d never even thought about boys before he met Eddie. That there’s just something special about Eddie that makes him want to give up his lady killing ways. That Eddie was different. That it was okay that he was having these scary new thoughts, maybe Will was just an exception.

And Steve doesn’t know how to have that conversation. When he realized he liked both it was a relief, that maybe he could have something normal and wouldn't have to spend his life lying or hiding.

But Eddie was different. Eddie was special. Eddie was probably it for Steve which is scary in a different way that he’s not ready to touch yet -- not when it’s only been three months.

There’s never been another girl since Nancy Wheeler, not really

There will never be another boy after Eddie Munson.

So he tries to help, as best he can. It’s easier with Eddie there, not quite dozing against his shoulder -- the kid’s emergencies always seem to come so late at night these days. “When I was ten, there was a boy whose name kept changing who decided prince charming should get to kiss his faithful knight. And when I was sixteen, your sister-”

Mike’s goodwill diminishes quickly as his sister gets introduced to the conversation.

“Stevie,” Eddie says. It’s not an admonishment for bringing up Nancy. It’s awestruck and watery. “You remember that?”

“Of course I remember the first boy I ever loved," that word catches up with him a second later. Remember.

Cause there's Eddie with his riot of brown curls and his Bambi eyes. Eddie, who has explained why soft feminine words chafe against his skin leaving him itchy and anxious. Eddie, who has an Uncle in Hawkins. Eddie who moved to town the summer before he entered high school with a buzzed head and his mother's last name. Eddie who finally settled into an E he liked best.

"Wheeler, here's a tip from me to you," Eddie says, his advice is always better received than Steve's anyway, "if you have to ask you probably already know."

"Straight people don't really spend much time wondering if they aren't really straight," Steve agrees.

They don't rush Mike out the door, a crisis is a crisis and even in the wake of new discoveries Mike deserves to be heard out. Deserves a chance to cry and rage and feel those emotions someplace safe from his Reaganite father -- just as much as Will deserves to have someone who knows what they want come to him, deserves better than experimentation.

They cross the bridge from late into early by the time Mike sets off. The sun is creeping up over the horizon and Mike looks solid, certain; the dawn hints at the man he is growing up to be. Though every instinct of Steve's begs him to drive the kid home, Eddie's soft hand lingering at his hip holds him fast. They wave instead, encouraging Mike to go home and to bed before he does anything; knowing his front bike tire is already pointed toward the Byers-Hopper place.

"The first boy you ever loved, huh, Stevie?" Eddie teases before the door has even managed to click shut.

"And the last, I'm hoping, if I play my cards right."

"You were always pretty good at that. You were the only person that summer who called me by my name, except Wayne."

"It was your name." He knows that's too simple. Knows how hard Eddie has had it, continues to have it. But that summer it had been that simple, Eddie trying on names like shirts each one fitting until they didn't. "For what it's worth, I like Eddie a lot more than Excalibur."

"Oh fuck off, I was going through a fantasy knight phase. Which I know you remember."

"Right a phase, and how much longer is this fantasy 'phase' going to last?"

They're the kind of tired that makes you feel drunk, when Eddie tackles Steve and sends them both to the floor and to giggles. Eddie might not have been his bi awakening, but Steve is pretty fine with him being his everything else.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #trans eddie munson #implied byler #steddie fic #my fic #i do worry that sometimes i come across as a nancy hater #which i cant emphasize enough is not the case #nancy is a complicated character and i love her and she and steve are not good for each other #also eddie trying on wayne because wayne was the first adult he told that he wasnt a girl and who handled it well #wayne at the breakfast table like okay then what is your name if its not [redacted] and eddie does not have an answer yet #so wayne says well just tell me when you get up what youre going by #so he decides while playing that day that its wayne #and that lasts exactly as long as it takes for steve to call him that before hes like nope thats weird #eddie is short for edmund but also short for eddie the head #eddie contains multitudes

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shanastoryteller · 1 year

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Happy Fall Season! 🍁🍂🌻🎃👻🧛🏻‍♀️ … Three faced goddess continuation 👉🏻👈🏻? God dammit shana i fucking loved this prompt, 2012 Tony is the only version that has rights and I’ve had such a problem with him ever since aou, but your writing took me back to when I actually loved his character

a continuations of 1

Rhodey heads to the smith, unsurprised to see a line of people outside of it, waiting for the man inside to succumb to his need to eat or sleep and pounce on him for whatever issue they believe needs his immediate attention. Peter is among them, the closest to an apprentice that exists, but he can’t enter the forge without everyone else pushing in too, so he waits with all the rest of them.

When they see him coming, they groan, knowing their chances have been destroyed, except for Peter, who just looks relieved.

He remembers a time when Edward belonged to him alone. Edward exists because of him, after all, and needs must, but sometimes he can’t help but resent that this is another piece that he’s had to share.

“When I walk back out, it better be to an empty hallway,” he says blandly.

He receives a chorus of, “Yes, General,” and a jaunty wave from Peter before he’s opening the door and then shutting it firmly behind him.

In the beginning, the alchemy lab and the forge had occupied the same space, the outpost not yet big enough to have the rooms to spare. It had been quickly remedied once Rhodey had found about it, because the last thing any of them needed was losing him to an explosion of his own making, but he can’t say he’s surprised to see a cauldron bubbling ominously in the center of the room. “You have a lab for a reason.”

Surprised brown eyes snap up to meet his, and then there’s that familiar grin that always causes tension to unspool from his spine, even when it really shouldn’t. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in. How goes the battle on the Eastern border?”

As if he doesn’t know. “They’re retreating. Our soldiers are holding the line and it looks like they’ve given up attacking us on that front. For now.”

“Sounds like something you should tell the king,” he says, frowning down into the cauldron as if it’s personally disappointed him.

Rhodey closes the distance between them, grabbing his chin and tilting his head to the side, frowning at the bruising mostly hidden by his hairline. “I am. But it’s a bit of wasted effort, considering the king is half the reason for their retreat.”

“Just half?” he pouts. “I really think that I deserve more credit-”

Rhodey kisses him to shut him up, a strategy that he’s been employing since they were teenagers, the whole reason necessitating Edward in the first place.

The second prince could not be scene dallying with someone so below him in station, the fact they were known to be friendly was a fluke of a broken wagon and much derision to all who heard of it. But Edward was no one, an educated fifth son of some nameless noble with a talent for metalwork, and no one cared if he kissed a commoner.

Then war had come knocking and a king could not do what needed to be done and so Edward had shifted from Rhodey’s to the country’s overnight.

Tony hums happily against his mouth and Rhodey pulls back rather than deepening it. Half the trick with was not letting him get distracted. “You need to get some sleep. Have you slept at all since getting back from the battle?”

The deep bruises under his eyes already tells him the answer, but it’s still worth asking.

“Need to figure this out,” he says, tilting his head to the cauldron. “It’s a coating for the blades to get them sharp enough to cut through armor. Not our armor, obviously, but other people’s.”

“A day,” he says, because Tony is needed everywhere at all times in all ways, and someone has to keep him from running himself into an early grave, and at the outpost, that’s him. “Just a day at home. I know you miss it. It’s been a while.”

Tony’s eyes go distant and fond. “Yes,” he agrees, and that one word has all the exhaustion that he won’t let show.

“You disappear all the time, no one will question it,” he murmurs, “I’ll make sure of it.”

“I’ll go if you will,” he returns. “You haven’t been home in even longer than I have.”

“Less of a need,” he argues, and he should argue against this too, when it’s unnecessary and dangerous, but he’s tired too. “Fine. We’ll need to sneak out to the woods if you don’t want to get caught.”

Tony clearly hadn’t expected him to agree that easily. “You hate flying.”

He hates how much pain it puts Tony in, but since he’s flying either way to get home, it doesn’t matter. “I’ll deal.”

Tony kisses him again, writes down some notes, douses the cauldron, and then they’re using the secret entrances that had actually been the whole point of building a lab near the forge. When they’re far enough away, Tony’s chest glows, the light and sparks spreading out from his chest to effulge his body and liquid gold and mercury sliding down his limbs. Rhodey has to close his eyes against the light, but Tony’s arms around him are always welcome, even when they burn almost too hot to stand.

The Iron Mage flying to the castle is a common enough sight that it raises no alarm and the brightness of Tony in flight means no one can tell he has a passenger, seen as nothing more than their own personal shooting star.

Tony melts the iron shutters back with a wave of his hand, likely reforming it behind them with a more intricate pattern than they’d been wrought with, because he always had such opinions about anything he hadn’t crafted himself.

He’s barely set Rhodey back onto his feet and folded the star back inside himself when there’s the running of little feet coming straight for them. Rhodey’s not surprised.

She’s always watching the stars, looking for her father.

Tony bends to pick up Morgan as she rounds the corner, barreling towards him with single minded intensity. “Daddy!”

“Hey, buttercup,” he says, hoisting her into her arms and settling her on his hip. “Miss me?”

“Yes,” she answers, wrapping her arms around Tony’s neck in a hug. She turns her head to grin at him, Tony’s eyes shining in her face. “Hi Rhodey. I missed you too.”

“Hi, Princess,” he says, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. She frees one arm from Tony to grab onto the front of his jacket, keeping him in place. He settled a hand on her back and that seems to satisfy her.

The door pushes open and Pepper is standing there, still with hair up and braided around a circlet and in a deep blue silk gown. “Someone here is supposed to be asleep.”

Tony and Morgan’s innocent faces are identical and equally unconvincing.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” Rhodey asks.

“It’s all three of you, really,” she answers, striding forward. She squeezes his shoulder, then uses it as balance to push herself to her tip toes.

Tony bends to meet her in a kiss, chaste enough that Rhodey doesn’t feel the need to pull away but long enough that he assumes Tony’s sleep might end up experiencing a delay.

“I don’t want to go bed,” Morgan says. “Daddy’s home.”

“I’ll be here in the morning,” Tony says and Pepper’s face relaxes. “Come on, I’ll put you to bed myself, okay? And then you can tell me about all the new things you learned over breakfast.”

“I’m not tired,” she insists, but only waves at him when Tony pulls away to take her to her room.

Rhodey waves back, almost goes with them, but having the two of them there will just make her twice as riled up.

“I could have another, you know.”

He looks down at Pepper, blinking. “I thought – after the war?”

After the cave, after swallowing a star rather than being swallowed by it, Tony couldn’t justify staying on the sidelines, couldn’t justify only contributing to the war as Edward. Besides, being captured in the first place had shown him that he wasn’t safe as Edward anyway, but even Tony couldn’t justify taking to the battlefield without an heir, without a child of Stark blood to inherit, without a queen who could rule both while he fought and invented and in the event of his death.

Prince Gregory had been ten years older than Tony, he’d been the boy everyone knew would be king. Tony was just the spare, and not even one had on purpose. It’s why he’d had the freedom to meet Rhodey in the first place, to take on the name Edward and poke and prod his way through universities and labs and harassing blacksmiths into teaching him a craft a prince was never supposed to know. They’d assumed his father would arrange his marriage to some foreign noble for political reasons and Tony would install her onto an estate and do what was necessary to add a couple kids to the royal line and that would be that, he would then be free to spend his time on pursuits he enjoyed and with the man he loved. He was just the second prince, after all, it’s not like what he did really mattered, and he and Prince Gregory had never gotten along anyway.

Lots of people hadn’t gotten along with Prince Gregory, lots of people had thought his temper and his cruelty and several other attributes made him unsuitable as king. Maybe, on their own, they wouldn’t have mattered much – Rhodey thought Prince Gregory was not so much worse than King Howard – but he was constantly compared to the brother ten years his junior and found lacking.

They never found out who was behind the attack that killed Tony’s parents and brother. With their enemies sensing weakness and declaring war soon after, it was easy to pin the blame on them. But there were persistent rumors that it’d been someone, or several someones, that wanted Tony on the throne over his brother.

Rhodey doesn’t know if it’s true. All he knows is that relief rippled through the country far heavier than mourning.

The relationship he and Tony had, the future they’d mapped out, had been possible for a snubbed second prince and utterly impossible for a king. Tony had put off marriage for longer than he should have, but he couldn’t forever, and his urge to get out and fight now that he could pressed down on him.

Pepper had been his friend first. Their friend first. A noble, but only barely, and utterly unsuitable for the title of queen according to her pedigree and also the only one Tony would agree to marry so the rest hadn’t mattered.

If she were anyone else, he thinks he would have hated her. But Pepper had come to him after Tony had asked her and said, “I love him,” like throwing down a gauntlet.

He’d known. Who couldn’t help but love Tony, once they got to know him? And Pepper was beautiful and competent and trustworthy, could have Tony’s children and lead his country and keep all his secrets. And Tony might be able to resist falling in love with Pepper when she was only his friend and confidant, but as his wife, the mother of his children, his queen? He would fall.

“I want what’s best for him,” she’d continued in what he thought was going to be the worst conversation of his life, “and that’s me and you. He would never give you up. You know that. You should have a little more faith in him.”

“He needs you,” he’d said quietly. What Tony needed is something he couldn’t be, he wasn’t a noble or a woman.

Pepper had lifted her chin in defiance, every inch the queen she was going to become. “He needs us.”

That had been years ago. They made it work, awkwardly and painfully at first, but much smoother these days, warmer and easier. When the war ends, he thinks things might even be easy.

Tony and Pepper had needed to have a child and quickly, to secure the succession. She’d been pregnant within four months of their marriage and Princess Morgan’s birth had been greeted with relief by the country. Still, more heirs are better, especially with Starks being thin on the ground, but Tony resisted the idea of having another child in the midst of war, another child that he might die on and abandon.

Which is what makes Pepper’s statement so confusing.

“I didn’t mean right this second,” she says, lips turning up at the corners. “I know I’m not exactly your type, but I certainly wouldn’t mind the process myself. Morgan’s yours, of course, but if you wanted – I wouldn’t mind. Tony wouldn’t either.”

He understands what she’s offering and he’s shaking his head before she’s even finished talking. “We can’t – they’d know.”

“Maybe the next one will take after my genes,” she says. “Goddess knows Morgan’s all her father.”

She is, so clearly Stark, from her eyes to her intelligence to her love of trouble. But there’s no way a child of his could pass as a child Tony’s, which is what any child of the queen’s would have to be. Even if they came out pale enough to pass as a Stark, which isn’t any sort of risk they could take, it wouldn’t be worth the risk of anyone finding out that a child in line for the throne was not of the Goddess blessed bloodline.

“Tony’s children are my children,” he says, and means it. Pepper and Tony had always been clear about that and it had been a relief, to not have to be so close and yet so far, to be able to love Morgan as his daughter even if it was nothing he could ever say out loud. “Go and help him with her. I know you have a lot to catch up on.”

He’ll go to his room, with the bed and comforts that he’s missed quiet a lot, and get the sleep that he’s also missed.

She sighs, squeezing his arm. “Don’t wander. I get up early and Tony never sleeps through it.”

Tony will get up with her, and kiss her as she heads to the hall, then go down to his room and crawl into bed with him, still sleep warm, until he has to get up and put in an appearance as King Anthony.

Rhodey smiles and nudges her towards the hall. “Go on, your husband is waiting.”

“Our husband,” she corrects imperiously and doesn’t move until he laughs and nods and repeats her words back to her.

#i actually think everyone's characterizations in aou onward were utter garbage lol #like i think tony gets shafted a lot because i love him but also they really just made everyone unlikable #the last marvel movie that was real to me was catws #damn this is so long #i'm just having a lot of fun with this au #asks #anon #prompt answers #prompts are closed #avengers

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