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hitlikehammers · 2 months

Text

take the call

rating: t ♥️ cw: off-screen car accident (but EVERYTHING IS FINE), hurt/comfort, softness ♥️ tags: established relationship, married steddie, hurt/comfort, rockstar Eddie/teacher Steve, Steve's heart of gold is very possibly going to be Eddie's undoing one of these days, well-worn-soul-deep love

for @steddielovemonth day eighteen: Love is terrifying (@starryeyedjanai)

set in the 00s, with Steve and Eddie having two decades of loving under their belts, now ♥️

Eddie isn’t expecting a call, any call, really; he’s in the studio, like, if he gets a call someone takes a message or whatever.

And in fairness, Eddie doesn’t get the call.

He gets a message.

“Eddie?”

He rolls his eyes kinda automatically, kinda thoughtlessly at the cut of the audio track to let the mic system override from outside the booth.

“Okay, so, like, don’t freak out.”

He’s not thoughtless at all about the way he clocks the tension in Jeff’s voice even across the speaker system; it’s entirely automatic how he freezes, how he looks up and locks eyes with his friend through the glass and sucks in a sharp breath for the look on his face: pained.

Maybe, maybe scared.

Eddie’s heart drops somewhere near his knees, but beats there so fucking hard.

“This lady called, and she said she found Lainie’s card inside the case of a phone she picked up,” and okay, okay, that’s…that’s random but maybe it’s about their assistance manger, who just got her contract confirmed and got fancy new business cards for it and has been handing them out to everybody she sees, even gave Eddie extras to pass on to Steve, maybe he can share them at the school as if anyone at even a hoity-toity private 6-through-12 school would have a reason for a card from a record label but she’s excited, and Eddie’s excited for her, and Steve loves the people Eddie works with, and not just because they’re attached to Eddie and he loves the things that come with Eddie as a given—but that’s also true, and always has been, but—

“She, um,” Jeff’s voice is filtering through again, and Eddie clocks that there’s…there’s something more to it, more than his brain’s willing to grasp just yet but his body’s apparently picked up on because he thinks the slightest breeze would knock him over and shatter him into pieces, for the tightness in his body; he’s not focused enough to count the separate beats of his pulse but he can tell it’s quick enough already, still weighed down near his feet, that counting would be kinda hard, would take effort:

“She found the phone at a car crash?”

So: the more-to-it. The thing his body already knew.

Eddie…Eddie doesn’t even need to know what comes next to know he cannot fucking breathe.

“Sounded kinda like, uh, like it could have been Steve’s phone,” Jeff is trying to tell him, and part of Eddie hears it, part of him does but most of him is white noise, is pins-and-needles, is underwater and drowning and not even fucking thinking of fighting the pull because he can’t, he’s heavy at the legs and his lungs are seizing and there’s, he’s—

“Because it, umm, she found the card because the case was broken?” and just last night Eddie’d watched Steve pop off the case and slide the cards behind with a laugh and a promise to take them with him not today—because it’s one of those federal holidays that only schools notice happening, like the post office is still open—but definitely tomorrow, never knew which of the kiddos at the Rich People School might be a budding metalhead underneath their uniforms—

“And she said the case was, um, like bright—“

Green.

Electric lime neon fuckin’ green because after three times of Eddie taking Steve’s phone by accident he’d come home with that endearing eyesore, and a kiss to the bridge of Eddie’s nose and a soft hard to confuse that, babe nuzzled against him and—

“It could maybe have just been a coincide—“ Jeff’s talking but Eddie can’t fucking hear it, not really, not when he’s letting the door slam behind him and ripping off his headphones to drop to the groundnut when he’s gasping hard enough to crack a rib, not when the floor’s gone out from underneath him and his vision’s tunneled and nothing seems real, and everything feels too real, every world ending possibility shuddering through his foggy mind alongside every heartbreakingly perfect memory blossoming up unbidden just to serve as a reminder, an underscoring of what he stands to lose, what maybe he’s already fucking lost—

He meets Jeff’s eyes without the glass between them as he grabs his keys from his jacket on the couch and makes himself take the breath that’ll fuel the voice, that’ll give him words, just one word, he needs, he fucking needs—

“Where?”

_______________________

Eddie shouldn’t have driven himself, he knows that.

Like, on some other plane of existing, he’s sure he knows that.

But on this plane, he rips past his bandmates, all the extra people with them for recording, jams the close-door button before anyone can follow him into the elevator because he happens to know this one’s quicker than the stairs even on a good day, and this—

Eddie’s shaking so goddamn hard he can barely get one foot in front of the other, he really doesn’t think he can manage ten fucking flights of steps.

He burns rubber on the way out of the parking lot, and the nearest hospital to where Steve would have been—on his day off, because holiday, he’d have bene close to home, he mentioned food shopping, he thought he might make stir-fry but he wasn’t sure, they hadn’t made a vegetable haul from the Asian market downtown in a couple weeks and they need to, they need to but Steve wasn’t feeling like going on his own, because he might not say it out loud but they both know he enjoys Eddie’s excitability when new items hit the shelves and he can’t read the language they’re labelled in so he guesses frantically until the man who owns the place takes pity, only laughs a little and explains what this spice is for, or that that crazy looking thing’s a fruit, and they ultimately buy whatever it is because Eddie wants to try it now, because he got invested and—

Eddie should pull off the fucking road; his head’s a mess, he can’t see for the way his eyes are welling, streaming, the way he’s shaking with sobs that don’t exactly burst forth, just leak from his lashes as he trembles horrifically because…

Because they were maybe gonna have stir-fry, tonight. Even without the good vegetables.

They were—

Eddie thinks it’s fucking cruel, kind of unbearably so, that his brain’s dead-set on still processing the mundane little perfections of his life as if every single one of them might be dashed to pieces, might be hanging by a thread, might be entirely fucking gone, and he, he…

He can’t. He just, he fucking can’t.

Because that the thing, isn’t it: the scenarios he’s imagining aren’t hypothetical—they’re all memories, too. Steve bloodied, Steve bruised, Steve’s bones broken and flesh torn. Steve still, too still; Steve’s skin under Eddie’s hands when he can’t find a pulse because Eddie’s shaking, same as now how Eddie is fucking shaking—

Eddie knows all those things. They’re so long ago, now, so distant but his fucking cells will never forget every single moment he saw the man he loves bigger than his own goddamn life hurt like that; be risked like that. Be lost like—

And that’s the difference. That’s what is unravelling him as he speeds through the streets quicker than he should, probably breaking more laws than he could count and definitely more than he gives a shit to notice: it’s the losing.

Because the first times, even the times that came after Steve was his: they didn’t come with the loss of so much time, so much of themselves, so much glorious life that they’d built between them, the struggles and the triumphs, the hard choices and the easy things that weren’t choices at all: everything hand-in-hand, every night spent curled around each other, all of them, all of him, inside that chest since he was twenty fucking year old, and Eddie doesn’t just not know how to be outside of what he shares with Steve.

Eddie doesn’t think his own heart can survive, if if Steve’s isn’t next to him.

Eddie’s damn fucking sure no part of him would want to.

It takes him a minute to steady himself enough to get out of the car, once he finally reaches the ER. Steady his body, but more his fucking soul because the whole of him is shaking, is crying out, is wailing unfettered and breaking because he’s terrified, he is goddamn terrified of what he’s going to find when he walks in but he has to, he has to because whatever awaits him, that’s his husband, that is the love of his whole goddamn life and if the worst is going to come for him he’ll face it like he’s faced everything else: at Steve Harrington’s side.

If the worst comes for one of them, then it came for them both.

So he’s stumbling, shuddering, but resolute in his chest when he flies through the sliding doors, eyes still swimming, unfocused but he makes himself take a deep breath—it takes a few tries, and he doesn’t quite succeed, it’s still a tremorous thing and his lungs are still in revolt, but it’s something, and he’ll take something; he has to to take something—

“Eddie?”

He almost doesn’t register it, the voice from the sick-spiral of his memories, all the love on the table to be forfeit—

He almost doesn’t register that his name’s not coming from inside his head.

“Oh my god, what happened?” There’s a flurry over motion in front of him, and he blinks rapidly to try and pin it down because it looks familiar, it smells familiar, it aches familiar in his chest but:

“What is it, what’s wrong?” and fuck, it feels familiar when a hand reaches for his cheek where it’s still damp, tacky for the tears; when another hand slides itself into Eddie’s and draws him in, a hand that fits like no other hand in this world or any other, ever—

“Are you okay?”

And the hand on his cheek turns him and follows his eyes and it takes that long for him to clear his vision properly, but now he’s just blinking so much because that, that can’t be, even if it feels in every goddamn way like it really is, but it can’t…

It can’t be Steve here, whole and on his feet and looking at Eddie with so much worry, so much heart as he tilts Eddie’s chin a little this way, that way, squints to try and see…something.

Eddie’s breath tears out of him in a wet fucking gasp;

“Am I okay?”

Because Eddie’s really not the one to fucking worry about here, Steve had—

“You’re in a hospital, Eds, that’s not usually where you go when you’re okay,” Steve’s eyes widen as he he slides both hands now to Steve’s head, holding him still and assessing…something, maybe, Jesus: Eddie doesn’t know, but he does know that the touch on him now makes his…makes his heart feel safe and he’d been fucking terrified he’d never feel that again.

“Fuck, what happened, baby, did you hit your,” and fingers are dancing gentle across points on Eddie’s skull, so delicate and careful and he can’t fucking help it—

“Are you real?”

Because he needs to know, he needs to know with words because this feels…this feels right and warm and impossible but also true, so.

He needs to know. “Am I…?” Steve’s lips part and his brow furrows before his jaw clenches in that dependable way he has of squaring up to the monster at hand, no matter the kind.

“Shit,” he breathes out slow but then he nods: resolved; “shit, okay. Okay, let’s find—“

“You are real,” and it turns out Eddie didn’t actually need him to say it. He just needed to see the flash in Steve’s eyes when he was ready to take on the world for the sake of love, the way he positions himself a little different in front of Eddie as he keeps one hand at Eddie’s cheek but then slides to brace more at his neck, purposeful, like he’s splinting a wound or something, and then a hand grabs for Eddie’s own again and: oh.

Oh yes. That is Steve Harrington, living and breathing and solid and real, because no one else protects like this.

No one.

Eddie’s heart stumbles, jackrabbits around a little, almost like a reset: like it knows as the implications sink in to Eddie’s mind that it’s not destined to break anymore.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees too easily, distracted as he tugs the gentlest bit at Eddie’s hand, toward the nurse’s station; “yeah, and we should—“

“And you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Steve shrugs it off, but Eddie…Eddie’s vision is clearing. His pulse is settling. He can hear above the static and his limbs are getting lighter.

“You’re one-hundred-percent okay, not a scratch on you, not a single thing wrong,” he needs to make sure, like, so fucking sure.

“I am fine, Eddie,” Steve turns to look him straight on, exasperated and anxious and vibrant with it, so alive in it; “but you’re—“

Eddie’s hand moves almost without his conscious consent, definitely without a plan to grab at Steve’s arm and pinch his skin because Eddie was vaguely toying with the idea of pinches himself, and maybe with poking Steve a few extra times to make sure he didn’t disappear, but apparently his brain landed on: pinch Steve, avoid confirmation bias if your head wants to lie enough to make him real just you you, because you need him that bad.

Steve startles, and turns those beautiful brilliant bronze eyes on Eddie, stretches wide as he gapes a little at his husband.

Eddie…Eddie is here, in front of his living-breathing-gorgeously-aghast husband.

“Okay, oww,” Steve drops Eddie’s hand and pulls back, leaving Eddie’s head to its own devices as he looks a little shocked, shooting just shy of a glare Eddie’s way: full of questions.

Eddie—now that the biggest one’s solved, and solved so perfect, so gentle and sure and he doesn’t have to bury the soul of him; he doesn’t have to bury his soul—but now?

Eddie also has some fucking questions.

“Where’s your phone?” seems the most relevant to start with.

Steve blinks, frowns a little:

“It got lost in the crash—“

“Crash?” Eddie’s tone pitches up to squeak a little because: Steve’s here and whole in from of him, yes. But fuck, there was still a crash? He was—

“Not mine, my car’s still parked at fucking Jiffy Lube,” Steve adds with a huff; “I saw it happen so I stopped and—“

And Eddie knows his husband. He knows his husband better than he knows himself, and Eddie’s kinda made it a point of pride for how self-aware he’s grown to be these days, in living this life and loving Steve beyond the bounds of living at all. But he knows his Steve, and so he knows damn well what happened.

Car runs into car. Steve sees it and jumps out to help. Because Steve Harrington is a protector. Steve Harrington is a helper. Steve Harrington is the best man Eddie’s ever known.

Soon as he jumped into the fray, he wouldn’t have thought once about a fucking phone.

And Eddie, Eddie just, he needs to—

He grabs Steve’s hands and wraps them around his own waist, lets them go and then pulls Steve tight to his chest and buries his face in Steve’s shoulder as Eddie winds his way around his husband, feels him breathing, feels the tickle of his hair.

“You’re gonna kill me, Stevie,” Eddie whimpers, that going tight now all over again:

“You’ve got the biggest heart of fucking gold the world’s ever seen,” he moans into Steve’s collar; “and you’re going to fucking kill me.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but his hands move up to rub Eddie’s back, rote and learned and he might not wholly get, yet, what Eddie’s putting together, and where Eddie’s head’s been, what his heart’s been through, but the first thing he knows, and does like clockwork, is to love of his partner, to soothe him even if he doesn’t know what for.

“Someone found your phone, and they, umm,” Eddie licks his lips, takes a suffering breath and tries to straighten but he’s not ready, not yet: he slumps right back onto Steve’s shoulder:

“They called the studio.”

“Shit,” Steve hisses, bunches his hands in Eddie’s shirt and draws him tighter to his chest: “shit, they interrupted,” and oh, fuck no, fuck regretting the interruption—

“They told me they found it at a crash site,” Eddie grits out, the hurt of it still raw, like just saying the words no matter where they landed in trust, just recalling those minutes that felt like full nightmarish lifetimes, reopens the tender wounds it’d left in hims; “they found it with the case broken,” and Steve leans back, then, eyes saucers as he meets Eddie’s gaze, breath catches harsh.

“Oh,” Steve whispers, eyes darting back and forth between Eddie’s, taking the whole of him in and then he exhales so heavy:

“Oh, babe,” he murmurs, fucking mournful before he takes his hands and links them behind the base of Eddies’ skull and draws him in to the center of his chest, envelopes him there whole: “come here.”

And Eddie falls into that chest—rising-falling-living—he falls into Steve so fucking fast

“I am totally fine, I promise you,” Steve breathes again Eddie’s ear, close and dear and real: “car’s fine—“

“I don’t fucking care about the car—“ Eddie tenses up, appalled at the implication that he gave one single goddamn thought to the car— “No, like, as proof,” Steve’s quick to correct him, to ease the hackles on him; “I wasn’t in the crash, but it was pretty bad and,” Steve shrugs a little then adds soft: “I keep my first aid certs up to date for a reason, I figure, right?”

Jesus; yes, okay. Steve’s savior complex had largely mellowed to a non-interdimensional-threat level with time but he’s meticulous about keeping every skillset he’d gone out of his way to learn from professionals before they’d gone up against the Upside Down for the last time sharp and at the ready for anything: even now.

Fuck, but this beautiful, brilliant, impossible man.

“I was helping, best I could, until the EMTs got there,” Steve tells him softly, fills in the gaps because he knows Eddie’s mind, all the pictures it paints for itself, and in times like these it’s always the worst possible pictures—he knows Eddie needs the slate wiped clean with the truths, blessedly softer, in this:

“Police wanted me to stick around for a statement but the girl who was driving the first car, she was so panicked and she didn’t want to go alone so, umm,” Steve huffs a little, shifts against Eddie gentle and solid and here: “she said she knew me, she was pretty desperate I think, so I rode here with her,” and of course he did, of course he did because he’s Steve; “now I’m just waiting to make sure she gets out of surgery okay,” he squeezes Eddie then, like a punctuation, and it feels so, so fucking good; “also still have to give the goddamn statement, but fuck knows that’s just hurry-up-and-wait,” he turns, and he kisses Eddie’s hair then and Eddie feels something snap in him, give way and the lingering tension spill from his frame as he gasp a little on a breathy exhale:

“I love you so much,” and he does, god: god, but how much he loves this man.

“I love you too, baby,” Steve mouths against his head and Eddie closes his eyes and nuzzles his a little closer as he puts it into words, because it feels like he needs to, it feels like in Steve’s arms like this, pressed up close to him to feel this undeniable life in him: it feels like the coast is clear enough to risk it, to confess:

“I was so fucking scared,” and the words only break a little, and that’s more than Eddie honestly expected.

“I am so sorry,” Steve bows his chin down to graze lips against Eddie’s hairline, delicate and intimate and shivery, trembly down Eddie’s spin for the best of reasons, now.

“Not your fault,” Eddie’s quite to counter, to make clear, because: “shit, you didn’t do anything, I just…”

Eddie makes himself pull back and meet Steve’s eyes, reaches out to frame his face, dear and desperate:

“I can’t lose you,” he moans a little, begs a little, says it with a bare line of something primal echoing in it, scraped straight from his bones: “I cannot ever lose you.”

“I know,” Steve turns and kisses one of his palms, and those two words hold the promise of five more they’ve said so many times, and held so true between them for so many year, through so fucking much:

It’s the same for me.

And to be loved the same as he loves is a fucking privilege; it’s heady and it’s wonderful and Eddie needs it, needs Steve, more than goddamn air.

“Sit with me?” Steve covers Eddie’s hands with his at his cheeks, and nods a little toward the blessedly-quiet collection of chairs by the windows; “while I wait?”

“Nowhere else I’d go,” Eddie says it like the given that it is, and pulls Steve close to kiss him full, to press his lips to Steve’s and drink his warmth, his breath, to feel it sink int past his heart and pump through his veins:

“Not ever, Stevie,” he speaks against Steve’s lips, all of him in it, every vow inside it:

“Not ever.”

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

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