For the angst prompt thing: Steddie and "Don't fucking touch me."
Hello! Thank you very much for sending a prompt, I'm sorry it took me so long to post, but I do think this one is my favorite out of all the fills I've done for this prompt list <3
[No warnings; Unnamed Freak (who apparently got a name in the most recent novel, but I didn't know that at the time) is named Oliver]
Angsty-ish Prompt List
-
“I’m gonna step outside for a minute,” Steve leans in to murmur in Eddie’s ear, even though the music isn’t that loud.
“Yeah, sounds good.” Eddie nods, and only just keeps himself from turning to catch Steve’s mouth in a kiss when he feels the brush of his lips against his ear; it’s not his fault he’s developed some kind of Pavlovian association between having Steve’s mouth anywhere near his skin and receiving kisses – but they do have company.
Said company is just Gareth, Jeff, and Oliver, but still. Eddie has some decorum.
Steve stands from the couch and the arm he’d had slung around Eddie’s shoulders slides away slowly, his hand brushing warm and heavy over the back of Eddie’s neck, thumb stroking once, familiarly, along the side of his throat before disappearing entirely as Steve moves towards the front door. He doesn’t do so great with groups of people in small spaces anymore; the noise gets to him, and the heat generated by so many bodies in close proximity tends to give him a headache, so he takes breaks now and then, just to give his brain a few minutes to unbend.
The door swings open on silent hinges (Steve had attacked it with a can of WD-40 and a look of determination earlier today, insisting he couldn’t stand the squeaking anymore; he’s always doing things like that around the house – little repairs, organizing, picking things up, even though Eddie insists he doesn’t have to. He says he wants to, the endearing little weirdo) and Steve steps out into the cool evening, leaving Eddie and the boys behind in the warm light of the trailer’s main room.
“So,” Jeff says, looking up from his spot on the floor and gesturing vaguely at Eddie with his beer can, “how’s that going for you guys?”
Eddie blinks at him. “How’s what going?”
“The whole thing between you two,” Jeff clarifies, and Eddie raises a skeptical brow at him.
“You wanna talk about me and Steve having sex?” Eddie asks.
Jeff’s nose scrunches in distaste. “What? No.”
“Not ever,” Gareth jumps in.
“I mean…” Oliver says with a shrug, flinching when Gareth pelts him with a balled-up napkin.
“No,” Gareth reiterates.
“I refuse to apologize for simple curiosity,” Oliver sniffs, and Eddie, seated next to him on the couch, gives him a shove.
He’s glad his friends are accepting – supportive, even (he’d like to say he wouldn’t hang out with them if they weren’t, but let’s be real: nerds could be hard to come by in their neck of the woods, and as long as they were the quiet type of homophobic, Eddie would probably still play D&D with them. But he’s glad they’re not), but he does have some boundaries.
Like, one or two, maybe.
“I just meant the whole… dating thing,” Jeff says, taking a sip from his beer. “Because I’ll be honest, I really didn’t see it at first, but it actually seems to be working out.”
“Dating?” Eddie parrots blankly.
“Yeah. You guys are in, like, some kind of never-ending honeymoon phase or some shit,” Gareth says. “Hasn’t it been over two months?”
“Uhhh, no, I think you gentlemen are confused,” Eddie drawls. “Steve and I are not dating.”
This declaration is met with a moment of silence.
“Seriously?” Oliver finally says.
“Yep,” Eddie replies easily. “No relationship shit here. Strictly a friends-with-benefits-type deal.”
“Seriously,” Olver says again, flatly this time.
“Yes, Oliver, seriously,” Eddie huffs, reaching over to give him another shove, only to have his hand pushed away.
“Eddie, he was practically sitting in your lap just now,” Jeff says. “You two are all over each other.”
“Constantly,” Gareth adds.
Eddie shrugs. “It’s not like this is a big couch; we gotta squish. Anyway, Steve’s just a touchy kind of guy.”
“He doesn’t sit like that with any of us,” Gareth points out.
“Yeah, well, you guys aren’t the ones receiving benefits,” Eddie says. “You want him to sit on your lap? You could ask.”
Gareth lets his head hang back with a noise of frustration. “That’s not the point, and you know it.”
“Don’t you two go on dates?” Jeff asks. “I’ve seen you at the movies. You talk about going out to eat, doing other shit…��
“Yeah, see, that’s the friends part of friends with benefits,” Eddie snarks. “Friends hang out sometimes, I’ve been told. We are all, in fact, hanging out right now, but that doesn’t mean I’m dating any of you.”
“You don’t see the way he looks at you?” Oliver asks, and Eddie can’t help but scoff.
He appreciates the fact that Oliver is passionate about pretty much anything he does, but it also means he’s given to romanticizing. He doesn’t usually manage to drag Jeff or Gareth in with him, though.
“Pretty sure he looks at me like a friend, because that’s what we are.” Eddie rolls his eyes before offering a smarmy little grin. “I mean, I’m sure he looks at me as an exceptionally attractive friend, but that’s it.”
“Genuinely can’t tell if you’re fucking with us, man,” Jeff says, rolling his eyes.
“Genuinely, I am not,” Eddie promises, taking the last viable swallow from his beer before getting up and heading for the kitchen, wiggling his empty can at the others with a raised eyebrow in question. Gareth raises his own near-empty can with a shrug and Eddie nods. “Look,” he says as he ducks towards the fridge, “Steve isn’t the kinda guy you have a relationship with, anyway, you know?”
Eddie doesn’t mean this in a negative way, just as a matter of fact. Steve just doesn’t seem to be a relationship kind of guy. Nancy had been something of an outlier, in how long she and Steve had lasted, and it had become clear after the dust from the Upside Down had settled that he really doesn’t have any interest in pursuing her further. Just the other day, he’d mentioned to Eddie how difficult relationships can be, and about how glad he is they have their thing together instead.
“Being with you is just… easy,” Steve had said; he hadn’t been looking at Eddie at the time, his face instead pillowed on Eddie’s chest, hair sticking to his naked skin where the sweat was still cooling from their last round, but Eddie could see the edge of a smile on his lips.
And Eddie doesn’t have much experience with relationships himself, but he knows that being friends with Steve is easy and that the sex feels equally easy and that the way he’d agreed with Steve and carded his fingers through his hair had sent Steve right to sleep with that same smile still in place.
Easy.
Now, Eddie shoves his head into the fridge and reaches for the beers that have somehow gotten pushed to the back. “It’s nothing major, okay?” he calls back towards the living room.
“Eddie…” Gareth calls back, an edge to his voice.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it.” Eddie waves vaguely, making sure to grab a second beer. “Anyway, Steve’s a good friend, and he’s really hot, and we’re just having fun.”
The bang of the front door against the frame startles Eddie so badly he nearly smacks his head on the underside of the freezer as he stands, a beer clutched in each hand like he might be able to use them as projectiles.
There is no threat, though – just Steve, who had apparently failed to catch the screen door before it had shut too quickly behind him. He doesn’t seem to have noticed; he’s just standing there, staring at Eddie, color rising high in his cheeks, eyes wide and shocked, like he’s just been slapped.
Concern wells up from Eddie’s gut, and he opens to his mouth to ask what’s wrong when Steve finally speaks.
“Yeah,” he croaks, “I’m not having fun.”
Eddie’s brows furrow in confusion, the beginnings of cold dread trickling into his veins well ahead of any conscious thought.
“I think I– I think I should go,” Steve says.
He grabs his keys from the side table by the door, where they’ve lived next to Eddie’s and Wayne’s for the last few months whenever he’s been at the house, and then he’s gone again, the screen door banging shut once more behind him.
And Eddie has no idea what just happened, but he knows it wasn’t good. He drops the beers on the counter and bolts out the door after Steve.
Steve is nearly to his car by the time Eddie scrambles down the front steps, and he’s paying absolutely no attention when Eddie calls after him.
“Steve,” Eddie tries again, stumbling to a stop right behind him as he jams his keys into the driver’s side lock. “Steve, for fuck’s sake, what–” he reaches out, wrapping one hand around Steve’s bicep, and Steve jerks out of his grip.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Steve snaps.
Eddie pulls his hand back, but doesn’t step away, entirely baffled by the sudden turn the evening has taken. “What the hell happened back there?”
Steve goes still, grip going lax on his keys. “I heard what you said, Eddie.”
“About – about what? Are you mad I was talking to them about us sleeping together? Because, Steve, they already knew,” Eddie insists, a little incredulous. “You said you were fine with them knowing! You were practically feeling me up in front of them!”
“I don’t give a shit if they know we’re having sex!” Steve hisses, finally whirling around to look at Eddie. “I meant the rest. About how I’m not the kind of guy you have a relationship with.”
Eddie’s stomach sinks. He hadn’t realized that was such a sensitive subject. “I – shit, I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings, I just didn’t think you wanted–”
“About how we’re just having fun,” Steve cuts in, and if he’d sounded raw before, his voice is practically ground down to nothing now.
That brings Eddie up short. “…aren’t we?” he asks after a moment.
Steve says nothing.
“I mean, shit, Steve, it’s not like we’re in a relationship,” Eddie says, offering a little laugh, because even Steve would have to admit that the idea is a little silly.
Except.
Except Steve just glances away, staring at the ground beside Eddie’s feet, and – oh, shit.
“Oh, shit.”
Steve is still unnervingly silent, one arm curled around his middle while the other hand comes up to pinch briefly at the bridge of his nose. He still won’t look at Eddie.
“You… you thought we were,” Eddie says dumbly, and Steve shrugs.
“Can you blame me? We spend all our time together, Eddie. I’m here more than I’m at my own house, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve slept in my own bed in the last month. We go out and do things together, I try to keep things nice around the house because I want Wayne to like me, we have, like, a lot of sex, and– we… I mean, we kiss and touch and just – do shit like that even when it doesn’t lead anywhere.” Steve shrugs helplessly, finally looking up. “I mean, Christ, Eddie, what did you think we were doing?”
“I thought we were friends!” Eddie insists. Steve throws him an incredulous look and Eddie amends, “With benefits!”
“Right.” Steve’s expression flattens back out, going cold and hard and unlike anything Eddie’s become used to from him. “Because I’m not the kind of guy you’d want to have a relationship with.”
“I said that because I thought you didn’t want to be in a relationship!” Eddie snaps. “It’s not like you stay with anyone for very long, so I just assumed you didn’t want to be with anyone.”
Some of the ice retreats from Steve’s face, leaving a watering kind of hurt in its stead. “Do you listen to me at all when I talk?”
“What? Of course I do!” Eddie might have gotten turned around in certain respects, but he will not have his merits as a friend called into question; of course he listens to Steve.
“Are you sure? Because I talk about you an awful lot. I talk about doing things with you, about doing things in the future with you,” Steve says pointedly, “about how I want to stay with you.”
And Eddie had wanted Steve to stay with him, too. He’s just been thinking – well, he’d thought it was because they get along so well, that Steve had wanted to stick around. That it had only made sense.
“We never talked about… being anything else,” Eddie says, the protest a little weak even to his own ears. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.”
Steve pulls a sharp breath in, pinching at the bridge of his nose again; he leaves his hand there this time, eyes scrunched shut. “Just a few days ago, I told you how much I liked being with you. How good and how easy it felt compared to anyone else I’ve ever been with,” he says, barely more than a rough whisper. “And you said…”
I like being with you, too.
Eddie had said that.
He’d meant that he likes being around Steve, likes being his friend, definitely likes having sex with him, but he’d said it while combing his fingers through Steve’s hair, while cuddled up with him in bed, and – okay, yes, he can see the mixed signals there. He can see where Steve might have gotten the idea that they didn’t have an arrangement, that they were just together.
“I– I didn’t mean–”
“Obviously,” Steve snaps, dropping his hand from his face and turning back towards his car.
Eddie tsks, frustrated, and reaches out to grab Steve’s wrist – not pulling, just trying to keep his attention.
“Don’t,” Steve warns him, pulling back from his grasp for a second time.
“I didn’t mean to lead you on,” Eddie tries desperately. “I really… I really didn’t.”
“Yeah. I can see that. But Eddie…” Steve is quiet for a moment, posture so tense and still that Eddie suspects he’s not even breathing. “I’m probably the best-qualified asshole around to tell you that you really have to fucking think about how what you’re doing affects the people around you.”
Somehow, that stings more than any screamed insult Steve could have thrown at him.
“Steve…”
“I’ll come get my shit out of your place tomorrow,” Steve says, low and sharp, before getting into his car and slamming the door behind him.
After that, Eddie has no choice but to step back or get run over, and he watches until Steve’s taillights are no longer visible.
He can hear the hissing of some whispered conversation just beyond the door as he trudges back up the front steps, but his friends fall conspicuously quiet the moment he steps inside.
“…hey,” Gareth finally ventures after several seconds of awkward, sticky silence.
“Hey,” Eddie says flatly.
“Do you… want us to stay?” Jeff asks.
Slowly, Eddie shakes his head. “I think I should… I need to– think about shit.”
The boys all nod, throwing him variously sympathetic glances and clapping him on the shoulder on their way out. Oliver pauses, as if he’s going to say something, but Gareth gives him a shove and gets him out the door before he has the chance. Probably for the best.
Eddie feels numb as he trudges back towards his room, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
He flops down on his bed, face landing in a pillow that smells entirely too much like Steve’s shampoo. Probably because it’s on the side of the bed that Steve always takes. Next to the nightstand with the small stack of sports magazines that definitely aren’t Eddie’s. And the spare pair of glasses that also isn’t Eddie’s.
With a low tug in his gut, Eddie realizes how much of Steve’s stuff has crept into his room, into the trailer, into his life – how much Steve has become a part of his life, how much of Eddie’s day has been built around him, how much he’s come to lean on his presence, has come to want him there.
And Steve is going to take it all back sometime soon. Take all of his things away before he removes himself from Eddie’s life, too, because Eddie hadn’t been thinking and he hadn’t been careful and he hadn’t realized–
Eddie’s pretty sure he just broke up with Steve.
He’s also pretty sure he hadn’t wanted to.
His main consolation, as he curls up on his side, nose still buried in Steve’s pillow, is that as soon as Robin hears what happened (and she will hear, he has no doubt), she’ll probably come murder him.
At least he won’t have to wallow for long.
Part 2
1K notes
·
View notes
totally didn’t expect the other part to do well at all but 😳 apparently i don’t know steddie fans. as such, have a part two <3 part one is here again, look out for the borrowed hunger games lines
“You’ve ruined your life, you know that, right?”
The kitchen had been basking in the lull of the quiet morning before Eddie had spoken up, breaking the silence. Steve blinks, realising he’s been zoned out staring at the swirling bubbles atop his mug of coffee and look up at Eddie across the table.
“Doing what you did.” Eddie continues. There’s this slight in his voice. Steve figures it’s not really aimed at him.
Chief Powell had agreed to not release the details of the case to the public for obvious reason. However, it went without saying that of the cops working the case, not all would be so free-thinking. There were plenty who deemed leaking the alibi and letting the town devour Steve’s reputation a more than fair consequence.
And, well, Eddie didn’t have any reputation left to tarnish or save.
Steve takes a sip of his coffee and lets the warm flavour coat his tastebuds as he tries to puts his thoughts in the right order.
He knows how Eddie sees this— sees it as this burden that he’s imposed on Steve’s life. That he had been able to accept it at first, the whispers of freedom tempting enough that he could be selfish enough to gasp them.
Then yesterday afternoon, Steve had come back from Bradley’s Big Buy with dried yolks splattered across the windscreen and regret howled through Eddie like a hurricane, fierce and wild. Realisation of what Steve had condemned himself to— no- what Eddie had condemned him to finally sunk in.
Steve can tell he’s been stewing on it all night. In the couple weeks he’s been here, staying in under the Harrington roof just down the hall from Steve, he’s surprised by how easily his brain has tacked on to Eddie’s habits. His little Eddie-ism’s. That’s what Steve calls them.
Like how Eddie’s nose will twitch if there’s something on his plate he doesn’t like, but he’s too polite to say it.
How he thumbs up and down the edge of a book when he’s reading, completely entranced. Doesn’t even notice his moving, twittering fingers.
How he’s always so much twitchier the morning after a sleep laced with terror after terror. It gives him away before Steve even see the bags under his eyes, the hollowness of his face.
Steve recognises that one from himself, from back when he’d gone through it all for the first time. The flinch is unshakeable when you’re convinced it’s all going to come back— that the world is going to tear itself up and spit out monsters you haven’t even dreamed of.
Today, Eddie isn’t twitchy like that. He’s tired, a sunken in face that comes from a bone-deep aching tiredness. He picks at his breakfast, bitterly avoiding the eggs on his plate.
And Steve can’t pretend to understand how Eddie grew up — can take his guesses but ultimately won’t get near the experiences he knows Eddie has lived through. Steve has only ever been on the other side. Stayed silent while someone else through snide comments and used the word fag like a jagged blade, to cut someone down.
So, he doesn’t know. Not even a year with Robin as his best friend and all her knowledge could’ve prepared Steve for the startling fear he’d felt when coming out of the store to the sight of a group of boys around his car, cartons of eggs in hand. One with a crowbar.
They would’ve smashed his windows if he had come out a minute later, he’s sure of it.
It had been like getting doused in icy water — the Letterman jackets on all of them, the sneers, still jeering taunts as they’d scattered across the parking lot. Steve had felt the bile rise in his throat as he got in the car and sat, staring at the steering wheel, his slimy fear melting and mixing with his anger.
Eddie’s point of view suddenly resounded within Steve in a way he hadn’t known before. Standing on tables, hollering about conformity, leaning in to every foul rumour about him— like a person drawing to full height, making himself as big as possible, to scare off a bear.
Steve gets that a little more now.
So, when Eddie tells him you’ve ruined your life he knows what he’s trying to tell him. Except, Steve doesn’t know how to say lightly that he’d gladly ruin his life to save Eddie’s. It’s too much — but Steve always is. Always loves in these big heavy ways that are too hard to handle.
So instead, he shrugs and says, “Consider it a trade.”
Eddie cocks his head, like a dog, just an inch.
“For following me into the lake and saving my life.”
Eddie scoffs and his head lolls back dramatically like what Steve’s said is ridiculous. “Jesus H Christ, dude, you saved yourself. I told you that I would’ve been too cowardly to come after you if Birdie and Wheeler hadn’t gone in first.”
He mutters the word cowardly with a hiss.
“Well then, a trade for drawing the bats away.”
“You mean the time I nearly became hamburger helper for the bats?”
“Christ, Eddie,” Steve scoffs. “I didn’t take you as someone who fished for compliments so hard.”
Eddie frowns, dropping his fork with a clatter on his plate. “I— what? I’m not- I don’t even—”
Steve cuts in. “You helped us and you saved my life, whether your horrible little brain can admit that or not. So,” He sits back in his chair with another little shrug and sips his coffee. “Equal trade.”
Eddie frowns, a crease forming between his brows. “No, not equal, Steve. You don’t get what you’ve done you— ugh, you just don’t—”
He huffs, cutting himself off, clearly unsure of how to voice his frustrations. He slumps back in his chair and eyes the eggs on his plate again with a glare this time.
Steve waits a moment and hopes he isn’t overstepping when he says, voice quiet, “I know, Eddie.”
Across the table, Eddie’s eyes raise to meet Steve’s and he doesn’t sound smug, he doesn’t sound angry, he just sounds defeated when he speaks.
“Do you?”
“Maybe not quite the extent of it until yesterday but, yes… I know.”
His words sink it and Eddie looks… affronted. His eyes get a little wide and a tremble finds his lips. Like the whole time he’d been convinced Steve wasn’t sure what he’d been getting into, that the reality hadn’t set in— that any moment he would rescind his alibi and throw Eddie to the cops and let them snap the cuffs back on him.
Steve hates that expression. Loathes that Eddie is so surprised that anyone would do this for him — something as important as keeping him alive and out of prison. Steve hates it because he knows it means that somewhere along the way, somebody had convinced Eddie that nobody would.
So, if he’s got to be the one to convince Eddie that someone will— that he will make the effort, will put his neck on the line because… well, isn’t that what Steve does best?
He’ll do it gladly.
Eddie picks up his fork and stabs his fork into the egg, the buttery yolk spilling onto the plate. Steve takes it as a truce, as him meeting him in the middle.
"So,” Steve swirls the mug in his hand and swills another sip back. Swallows it and takes a page out of Eddie’s book and goes the joke, leaning forward, forearms on the table. “If I’m gonna be your boyfriend for the foreseeable future I should probably know more stuff about you. Y’know, like, uh, the deep stuff.”
Eddie’s sunk back down in his seats but at Steve’s final sentence, he perks up. A smirking sort of grin crossing his face and Eddie twists a piece of his hair in front of his mouth. He hasn’t kept eating yet, too focused on the conversation.
"Uh-oh, the deep stuff.” He’s got that teasing tone in his voice. “Like what?"
"Like...” Steve scrambles to pull something from his brain. “Um, what’s your favourite colour?"
“Oh well, now you've stepped over the line."
Eddie’s sarcasm melts into a chuckle as Steve laughs, ducking his head instinctively. When he lifts his gaze, he’s relieved that Eddie looks a little lighter. Not much but a smidge of difference — Steve can see it if he squints. He’s sure it won’t be the last conversation they’ll have about this but for now, it’s settled.
Curiosity piques in Steve and he tries to sound casual when he says, “No, really, what is it?”
Eddie blinks and curls his hair around his finger once more, tugging it lightly. He seems to be considering his answer, eyes dropping to the sweater Steve’s donning.
“Yellow.” He finally says. “Not mustard but, y’know, lighter. Colour of the moon on Halloween or…”
“Cheese?” Steve suggests.
Eddie laughs. “Yeah, the right kind of cheese, sure. What about you? Favourite colour?”
Steve considers it — for the longest time, it had been red because Tommy had told him that red or blue were the coolest colours to like, way back in third grade. No one has asked him since then.
“Pink, actually.” Steve admits, hand coming up to brush across his nose, trying to hide behind the motion. He envies Eddie’s long curls suddenly. He feels the need to explain, more words rolling off his tongue. “Like, y’know, when the sun starts to set, like all dusky, it’s just… nice.”
Eddie’s staring at him peculiarly, his lips parted yet quirked up in this faint smile. If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d call it awe. Breaking his stare, Eddie chuckles again, finally properly picking his fork up to finish his meal.
“Steve Harrington.” He murmurs warmly, more to himself. His lips twitch with a smile. “You just keep surprising me.”
—
some people wanted more 🤲 uh get tagged idiot - normally i don’t do taglists but u were all so kind as to reply to the post & i didn’t get a chance to say thank u for ur lovely words! this is my thank u! have sum more!
@friendlyorange @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @lostinadmiration @life-love-musicaltheatre @oldlovershippiemusic5 @phoeniceae @catateme9 @lolawonsstuff @justagaypanda @pluto-pepsi @whoopstie @scenesofobx @justforthedead89 @musical-theatre-gay @theperksofbeingstjimmy @ikilledabuginthewall @imauselessartist @fridgebaby @lingeringmirth and uhhh @corrodedcoughin cos i still do a little squeal when u rb my tings even tho we’re mewchies :D
2K notes
·
View notes