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hitlikehammers · 17 days

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When It Turns Out You're In Love With the Sea but also THE MAN YOU LOVE IS LITERALLY THE SEA (Steddie Pirate AU)—COMPLETE

(or: remember when I mentioned MYTHOLOGICAL THEMES in the tags?)

🌊Under the Water (Our Hearts Will Dream Again)🌊

Chapter Eight: No Idle Exaggeration

✨NOW COMPLETE✨:

START AT CHAPTER ONE // TWO // THREE // FOUR // FIVE // SIX // SEVEN

also on ao3

Eddie’s body fails him wholly, in that moment, bones trembling and breath catching and knees wholly giving out but in that moment, his crumbling frame is not the only phenomenon to take place.

Because when he pitches forward, those cool-firm-familiar-beloved-too-strong hands are already catching him, already pulling him close to a similarly familiar and beloved chest that’s rising and falling against Eddie’s cheek with real breath, that’s beating fast and full and almost frenzied but there’s a restraint in it, not of feeling but of rhythm: like the, like it’s the—

Like the whole goddamn Ocean is held in the chambers that draw in, and beat out, again and again and again; like the world entire, above and below the water’s pulsing reassurance, intent and devoted to the fixed point that is Eddie’s needy ear pressed against the sound.

It helps. It does help. He can breathe, a little; he can’t stop sobbing but he doesn’t think that’s really in the cards any time soon no matter the strength of the heart under him, the undeniable proof of life-life-life—it’s not foolproof. It cannot stitch every tear in him left festering these long weeks alone but; but.

But gods, does it help.

“-eloved, sweet angel, breathe with me, gentle and sure, listen, just listen,” and Eddie is, now; he doesn’t know what time must have passed but his weight’s leaned wholly in Steve’s arms, translucent only on the surface now, it seems, to the point of iridescence in the moonlight with a certain ebb and give to the shimmer—like the Ocean dances with the moon—and it’s a transfixing sight, maybe moreso with the wavering focus through his own ceaseless tears as he shakes in Steve’s—Steve’s—hold as Steve’s chest lifts him with the strength of the tides as much as the soft cradle of the surf, a lingering hold that does not dare halt in the middle, between inhales and exhales lest there creep any doubt in the break—for Eddie’s sake.

Wholly for Eddie.

“Hold onto me, darling,” and Eddie hadn’t noticed Steve’s litany of gentle endearments hadn’t paused any more than his breath or the heavy, unassailable knock of his heart to Eddie’s cheekbone; Eddie doesn’t notice the words having never stopped until they shift, and even then it takes a moment, a few cycles of breath before he processes them, murmurs at the same pitch, in the same lull of life through lungs and blood through veins.

Eddie grips tighter to Steve’s shoulders, hopes that’s sufficient and Steve only reaches, breathes and hums and never once shifts Eddie’s head from its place above his heartbeat as he bends, as he scoops Eddie’s from his boneless knees into what he thinks may be a bridal carry but that will shift him too far, that will move the beat away and if he loses his breath again, he whines at the threat, the terror rising in him—it wasn’t real, it was only a dream, the truth a nightmare he’s barely survived this far and won’t much longer, can’t after this; not after this—but he had nothing to fear, not further loss to weather because Steve…moves, bends, flows effortless as he cradles Eddie’s head to the center of his chest, safe against the drum of the undertow not seeking to wash him away but envelope him with its force and carry him always; then reaches with a strength so far beyond a man, yet seemingly as effortless as him curls Eddie’s legs around his middle, keeps hold at his thigh in case he can’t brace himself and he’s not sure he can, in truth: he needs Steve.

He needs Steve’s strength as a practicality; he needs Steve’s hold as further proof.

But it’s like that, with his unwashed hair split and wild burrows tight to Steve’s tidal heartbeat—it, too, stronger than any human chest should hold, more might in the sound than Eddie thinks the heart itself was build to stand and yet it echoes like a lullaby, like a promise wrapped tight and true inside the kind of sound a child has to imagine is the closest to be found alongside the voice of a god; it’s twined around his frame and held up in his arms, held close to his heartbeat and kissed at the temple for every second step, surrounded as best he can be by proofproofproof of the unimaginable, that Eddie is carried to the chambers that has been theirs, together.

Eddie is being carried there by Steve, so that they might be there…together.

Eddie’s not sure he ever wholly stopped his tears from falling, but gods: the sobbing reclaims him as the weight of it hits him anew: this space, this haven, this home, and all of the loss and the heartbreak—

Theirs. Together: theirs, and as Steve settles them soft upon the bed and wraps his legs around Eddie all the close and tighter, his hold all the more firm and unflagging, Eddie thinks also: theirs, and maybe mending where it had shattered so completely. Beyond all possibilities, even the smallest shards and crushed fragments ground to dust unrecognizable are somehow impossibly shifting toward whole again—because here, here, is Steve.

Eddie’s chest clenches but…not in a wholly bad way, or perhaps no degree of bad about it at all as Steve settles them, curls around Eddie like a cocoon, fostering the rebirth of a self that Eddie had thought lost, the version of him whole and in love and held close to a warmth that was close enough to love to be more than all he needed in this life; Eddie’s eyes flicker idle toward the door and he burrows into Steve all the closer, suddenly afraid Steve will try to wedge the entrance for privacy, but Eddie won’t be able to bear it, he won’t be able to watch him with both eyes and not still think his own sight a liar, a figment of a broken mind, he—

“They won’t bother—“ Eddie blurts out quick, his muscles tensing but his pulse still strangely so steady even if it seems to transmute speed into strength, still it should be racing, terrified; he isn’t wholly sure why he volunteers the proof that his crewmates had written him off as a lost cause as his main argument for keeping Steve precisely where he lies, here, but.

Eddie’s never claimed to be of the most sound mind on any day of his entire life; and damn it all if the days that have preceded this moment could even rightly be counted as life, for the pain in them. For the shell of him that barely moved and scarcely lived.

He forgoes making sense of anything, save the sound of Steve’s breath, the beat of his pulse, the coolness of his touch that isn’t cold but refreshing, something protective in it that lends it the most untenable contradiction of warmth that tremors through Eddie’s limbs, sparks feeling in them again.

“They know not to bother you,” Steve acknowledges Eddie’s nonsense divulgence with something close to vehemence, certainly a cutting, steel-line of a thing as he gathers Eddie’s closer to him, wraps him tighter where the patch of curls are slowly softening from sea grass to fluffy hair on his chest.

“Your care was not theirs to interfere with, nor theirs to commit to,” Steve hisses so low it’s nearly a snarl when he adds: “to be trusted with.”

Eddie almost shivers for the razor edge in the words but: he wouldn’t. Not ever. In fact he feels just about the exact opposite, as if safety and protection, reverence and a vow deeper than words is flooding his mind, the breath he’s slowly regaining as if the promise beyond speaking is why he’s able to gasp that very breath back at all.

“Not that you made it simple for me,” Steve cocks back at the neck to shoot a narrowed gaze downward, one that Eddie’d believed he’d never see again save in the tortuous dreams that would plague him until rest claimed him, granted him clemency; “I have never restored my human form so quickly in all of time, do you understand that?” Steve fusses with the linens in tucking Eddie into the bedding, close and tight; “Every source of nourishment I could find across the sprawl of my entire being, the whole of the body of my First Form taking in the strength to heal, so as to pass it to you as you chose to neglect your wellbeing, to let yourself languish, as if you are not infinitely precious,” Steve’s voice halts when Eddie whimpers, when Eddie feels his eyes prickle, then the tears fall anew when the words sink in, when the truth of the voice being hereseems undeniable, despite…everything, despite the sense-memory of Steve’s blood-tacky chest stilling under Eddie’s hands—

But then there are hands moving Eddie, and Eddie whines again to be ripped from the comfort, the reassurance, the certainty in the motion, the breath and beat of Steve’s chest but hands cradle his face ever so gently, but intent still, almost urgent as eyes that have darkened closer to amber again pierce him to the soul:

“Did you think it was all exaggeration?” Steve asks, somehow both incredulous and heartbroken and it leaves Eddie feeling just the same, lifting his hands to cover Steve’s and take comfort in how they’re laced together immediately, no hesitation: there’s no hint of incredulity in that.

“I told you the Ocean was a part of you always,” Steve tells him with a vehemence that tips the boat, like the Ocean responds to a call upon its presence; “I asked you to feel it for yourself, the way I made the whole of me move and give in time with your pulse that night,” and Steve’s gaze may ask if Eddie recalls clearly enough but oh, Eddie remembers, of course Eddie remembers Steve’s body on his body, taken needy and as a gift received and given into his body, carnal yes but so far beyond, like it replaced the blood in his veins with the salt of the Sea.

“And then so much more,” Steve confirms it, tracing his lips without every looking away, not once and Eddie feels the strangest sensation where his heart should be racing for the gravity in it all: it’s almost like it shivers instead, shudders deep, like the breaking of the waves as Steve breathes against him:

“I gave you my Heart,” he exhales like a holy thing: “to keep.”

And the shuddering continues, the ebb and flow of the tides, and Eddie…Eddie witnessed with his own eyes a resurrection. He saw a man beyond a man, saw an entity beyond Eddie's imagination come to him, merge for him alone it seemed, felt, no—no, Eddie knew as much, from the foreign familiar lump of a more sacred thing out from his heart; Eddie had felt it when Steve, undeniably his love, clutched him and caught him and cradled him close with strength exceeding any human, any beast, anything Eddie’d seen or heard of or known: but also more tender than Eddie knew a thing could be and survive all the roughness of the world: as if both existed…beyond. Just this world.

“Your Heart,” Eddie whispered, runs words back through his reeling mind: the Ocean was a part of you always, without exaggeration, and the feeling of being one with the water when Steve rocked into him, when Steve held him close and whispered how the Sea was in him, how he’d been right to dream it so all along; he takes a halting breath, not afraid exactly but overwhelmed, in truth, before he slides a palm of his own to his chest, presses to his sternum hard enough to ache, and feels, really tries to touch the sensation below and consider it, because when he does, when he’s not lost to fancy, or too overcome with hope tangled with disbelief inside the miracle of his love returned to him—when he reaches down and feels the rhythm—

Eddie knows his heartbeat. Doesn’t everyone, isn’t it the thing that lives in the background perpetually until it surges to the fore to be known in fits and bursts? It’s intrinsic, and Eddie is keenly aware of its deep hum, the music of it. And the thing is: this is still music. Elevated, almost; familiar, and welcome almost beyond what he’s always known, ecstatic to be held and kept, to listen to and feel close, thoughtful the whole of him but—

It is not the same heartbeat he’s lived with all his life. Because it’s not the same heart, either. Because Steve gave him, to keep because mortals needed it; and all the whole Steve had said and held as truth that Eddie was of the, the, he’s—

“Your heart,” Eddie whispers, marvels; doesn’t ask it like a question because as unfathomable as it is, it’s only less so than the depths of the Sea itself and if he takes that for all that it is, takes Steve for all the he says and does and feels clear in Eddie’s own veins, for Steve here and holding him, watching him with affection and unwavering care: there’s a sense in it. It’s impossible, but he felt Steve still beneath his hands. The possible is maybe not so simple an idea to name anymore.

“Your heart,” Eddie says once more, slow and considering, massaging the almost-beat, whole-formed rhythm under his ribs; “because you, you’re,” and he looks askance at Steve, needs his strength again because he can’t say it; in case it is impossible, and it is only for absurdity’s sake that he concocts such foolish fucking notions, he cannot be the one who says it first—

“Because I am the Ocean.”

And of course Steve saves him, steps in to carry him and lend his strength entire without ever needing to be asked. And it’s not as if the words weren’t the ones on Eddie’s tongue, or else, not that close, more stuck in his throat around the sea-sway of his blood rushing, impossible but real. It’s just the way it’s said. The sky is blue. The grass is green. Eddie’s heart belongs to the Sea. The Sea is sometimes a man named Steve.

Eddie’s heart belongs to Steve even stronger, even fiercer; even more.

But…his brain is less quick to be convinced than his heart is, and there are still slivers not of doubt, but of something staticy and numb, catching on the rough snarls of impossible.

“You mean, you’re,” Eddie’s desperate mind grapples, and he thinks it might be something like the death rattle of sanity, on the edge of epiphany; “you’re like,” he clears his throat; “like Poseidon?”

It’s not that it makes more sense; Eddie thinks maybe it’s just an easier scope of a thing to pretend to grasp at.

And Steve, oh…oh his Steve: first he wrinkles his nose, then he lifts it ever so slightly in the air as he huffs a laugh, almost offended by Eddie’s fumbling clinging to the final remnants of what counts among the even tenuously tenable.

He’s so godsdamned beautiful, and Eddie is so irrevocably in love.

“The many gods have liked to play at controlling me, fickle children,” Steve comments flippantly, as if he’s remarking on the shade of the trees against the setting sun, and whether he buys into superstitions for its shade; “they come and they go,” and then his lips curl and his eye sparkle; he looks less idly bothered and more wry, even mischievous:

“I sometimes like to play along in kind, for sport,” he confesses, muffling a spat of laughter into Eddie’s hair; “it is usually enough to spurn them when I stop indulging them,” and spurning gods, in the manner Steve shares it, sounds no less than a giddy fucking lark before Steve tuts, and Eddie can hear the eye roll that accompanies his little dry chuckle as he still downright despairs:

“They always have the fragilest egos.”

And Eddie takes a moment in the lingering levity to ponder just what has become of his life. And yet, in Steve’s arms that are more warmth now than anything else, the hum of his beating life a resonant constant through every place he presses to Eddie’s frame, his breath real and hot through Eddie’s curls, at the shell of Eddie’s ear: he finds an answer to the question land superfluous. He doesn’t truly give a damn what’s become of his life in rational terms. His heart feels back to swelling, so full and stretching further again, like life is soaking back into him, has already made roots to keep once more: for Steve.

Roots…roots, Eddie thinks, somehow made of Steve.

“I am not a god,” Steve huffs a little, and his hair’s mostly human strands when he flips it just the slightest bit; also Eddie would beg to differ, because Steve may not be that sort of his but Eddie’s spent too many hours just staring at him, gazing upon him to not be fully aware and convinced that Steve is a fucking god, so—

“What I am,” Steve leans in pointedly, eyes Eddie so meaningfully; “is the Ocean.”

And again, he says it so…simple. Like it’s a plain fact that requires no context. Like it’s an obvious, commonplace declaration.

Like it makes any godsdamned sense at all but…Steve’s hand is in Eddie’s hand, playing over his knuckles, and okay. Okay.

Eddie can try to…figure out what that means.

“So,” he draws out, impressed his voice is a little more of a human sound now, just Steve’s presence, his proximity, his living-breathing realitypumping life into the cracks of him;

“Like a naiad?” Eddie ventures, because his mother told him other stories, when she told him of the shell-secrets; “or a, a nymph?”

Eddie winces at that because no, Steve’s isn’t nymph-like, if the stories were at all to be believed, and even if they weren’t, the name just doesn’t match the touch of him, the body that had laid against his body, the feel of him to stretch and fill—

No. Not a nymph. But when Eddie winces for the suggestion?

Steve laughs, reaches for Eddie’s cheek and draws him into the kind of kiss that’s more smile than anything else, and chuckles warmly as he strokes Eddie’s jaw, the sound just pure joy.

“You have such a lovely mind,” he tells Eddie with nothing but warmth, and wondering; “no, though both have been my companions, from time to time. The sirens and bisimbi, the mermaids and the selkies, the nixie and the kelpies and the kappa, even the rusalki who get a very underserved reputation, they’re actually not bad at all,” Steve tips his head like there’s a story, no, more like so very many stories; “I’ll have to introduce you to a naiad especially, my oldest friend,” Steve’s smiles small, the kind of grin pressed close to the heart and Eddie knows yes, he must meet this naiad—a naiad?! The best friend of the Ocean, who is, just to keep on track, Eddie’s own lover and beloved?!

It is too…it is so much. Yet it is starting to settle like wonderment, like excitement in him. His love is just casually asking him to meet the family, as a matter of course.

What’s the ocean’s equivalent of butterflies in his stomach, given that his blood’s been co-opted by the waves?

“These are creatures and spirits who call me their home,” and no, no, Eddie is not petty as to bristle at someone, anyone, anything else calling Steve home, especially when something of such unthinkable and almost ungraspable magnitude may very well be in the process of being revealed him. Eddie is not that petty.

He’s not.

“But they are not Me.”

And Steve may say it with that simplicity, that almost-flippant obviousness, as if whole concepts of being, of the earth and existing on it, of loving and what a heart can hold: as if he’s not rewriting and remaking them entire as he lies wrapped up around Eddie’s body, as he strokes through Eddie’s hair with…with an uncanny way of watching the wayward waves of his curls, now that he thinks of it, now that he considers the snags Steve never catches as he glided like pure comfort through the strands.

“I am,” Steve toys with his lower lip, so strangely human, so tempting to Eddie’s gaze, Eddie’s own lips; “Elemental, and came to be upon the shaping of their world. Though throughout whole epochs I only changed the stretch and span of my First Form,” and here Steve’s hand pauses, cradles Eddie’s cheek again and looks at him so ducking tender; “it was not until humankind emerged that I strived to match their likeness, and reach to them,” and he wraps his whole hand the at the curve of Eddie’s neck, thumb stroking slow, rhythmic: the goddamn waves at rest under all the sky.

Jesus.

“I have been revered, through the many ages, as if I were a god,” Steve grimaces, confesses it like an embarrassment; “which I worked very hard to learn to see as ignorant flattery, rather than insult—“

“Insult?” Eddie tries very hard to comprehend how seeing Steve for all he is and feeling appropriately worshipful could be anything but just…natural. The proper way of all things.

“The gods are petty and discard their toys when they tire of them!” Steve’s tone is both imperious and indignant, and oh, oh, Eddie didn’t realize he was afraid to miss the catty, petty, adorable side of his beloved, considering he’s turned out to be not only not-human, but to top that, the whole-ass larger part of the world, not merely Eddie’s world alone anymore, but the warmth that rises through him is colored with relief and joy, now, especially as Steve adds, a little haughty:

“I am constant. Reliable. Eternal.”

Ah, yes. There’s his beloved, in as his adorably aggrieved petulance.

But, the choice of words—

“Eternal…” Eddie mouths, the implications swirling, dizzying, almost too vast to conceive let alone accept, but Steve seems to cling to something else, and Eddie doesn’t quite follow, not at first, save for the inexorable, undeniable wash of affection in it all:

“I did not wish to leave you in such distress, love, and I regretted wholly that I could not explain in the moment,” and Steve’s hands on his skin are the only thing holding him together because there’s no need to elaborate, Eddie knows exactly the moment he means, when Eddie's hands felt the lifeblood push out of Steve’s body, felt him fade, felt him—

But Steve is here, and his hands are warm and sure. It still devastates him, but it doesn’t wholly destroy anymore, like this.

“But when another form, a mortal form, sustains a mortal injury,” and Eddie cannot help but whimper a little, but to lean closer into Steve’s solid warmth; “I am bound to retreat to my First Form,” and he goes back to stroking Eddie’s hair, his voice pitch low and soothing like the subtle shift of low tide; “because it isn’t mortal, and such injuries mean nothing to it,” Steve explains in a hush, his voice and the motion of his hands matching the tide-beat in Eddie’s breast in perfect harmony and it doesn’t merely soothe something in him; it starts to truly heal something in him. “I let the waves restore me before I return, but,” and Eddie can hear the drone in Steve’s voice as he admits, so apologetic: “I have never gauged the timing for it all, never had reason to think on it, not until—“

And he cuts off, moans a little in sympathy, in remorse as he gives up on words and pulls Eddie tight to him, back into his chest and it’s odd, because the speed and strength with which he finds himself crushed to that broad chest is impressive, catches Eddie’s clinging hands against his own sternum where his head’s cradled to the center of Steve’s. And it’s not as if he hadn’t spent minutes, maybe hours nestled there as Steve’s body returned to its human appearance, as Steve’s presence proved real and tangible and not just a heartbroken hallucination. But now: now Eddie recognizes something in the heartbeat under him. Because if Steve had lent him some eternal magic from the making of the world, his heart should feel,should sound like the waves beating through his own veins but: no.

No: Steve’s heartbeat is human. And not just human: Eddie knows his own pulse. And that, that is—

“You meant it,” Eddie whispers, because he cannot manage more strength, is too overcome for the reality of it, the crashing impact of the rhythm against his hands versus the percussive drumming under his ear.

“You left me your Heart,” Eddie breathes, can scarcely comprehend, feels tears at his eyes he can’t even explain; “is it—“

“Your own felt in need of restoration, though I think it was simply shock, despair in a moment of high feeling,” and Eddie can feel it under his hand, the more-human flutter that’s pounding like Eddie had expected in his own chest: but there’s something dulled about it, like a shield maybe. Some…protection.

Eddie doesn’t know quite what to make of his heart, literally outside his own body—

“It’s still here, the physical form of it, though it is still troubling that I have to remind you that you very much need to keep that here,” Steve lays his hand on Eddie’s chest, like he could hear Eddie’s thoughts—wonders if he could hear their conclusion too: to live in Steve’s chest would be a gift.

“But there are perks to being of the Earth in this way,” Steve shrugs a little, and massages at Eddie’s chest, the pulse of his own Ocean heart above and stronger than Eddie’s own nestled safe below, Steve’s somehow feeding, sustaining, healing the damage wrought upon Eddie’s mortal heart with a chrysalis of the Ocean, the Heart of the Ocean at that, given to Eddie to help, to keep, to—

“But I would never try to, to drown the precious movements of your perfect self, your beloved heart,” and for the first time in a while Eddie consciously feels his own heartbeat in his own chest kick up toward the blanket of Steve’s Ocean heart and it’s the strangest thing to hear it under his ear the same inside Eddie’s chest, like he’s being tending to on both sides of a coin greater than any man could earn, but then, and more: his Ocean heart trills, like a playful breeze on the water, like it rejoices just for the proof of Eddie’s healing, or Eddie being able to reconstruct himself after breaking entirely: of Eddie’s heart remembering how to beat again when it’d resigned itself to slowly petering out, and in face of losing his everything Eddie’d had no intention to fight it, just to plead the inevitable to hurry itself long, but Steve: Steve had stepped in immediately, threw the core of his eternal fucking being into Eddie’s chest and…prioritized Eddie even as he remade the form holding Eddie now, from the water itself?

Eddie almost can’t breathe for the immensity of it; all for him. How—

“I am sorry that I took it in exchange without asking there and then,” Steve looks down, breaks eye contact for the first time in long enough for the loss to be jarring and Eddie: Eddie extracts one hand from between their chests to catch Steve’s chin and tilt it back up because how could he even begin to consider it something to forgive, not merely saving Eddie’s life but saving, restoring Eddie heart, and with his own—

“Did you think it was a lie,” Eddie breathes, desperate now in this new way this; this need for Steve to comprehend and know through the whole expanse of his elemental being: “did you think it some idle exaggeration, just a silly, mortal whim, every time I pledged that heart, my heart, to you? My everything—“

“I wanted to believe,” Steve demures, almost, while he simultaneously tries to infuse the words so fervently so that the doubt lands not upon Eddie, never upon Eddie, only his only bewilderment, the beautiful idiot, how can he not see his worth; “I wanted to hold it close from the start,” and there’s a heat that spreads through Eddie because he could have, he did, as much as Eddie could throw his everything into the waters far and near. More than he even suspected he was allowed: greedy. Needful.

“I came here seeking you for that very reason, you must know that.”

Eddie blinks; no. No he did not know that, but, now that it’s said, now that Steve’s eye on him are so dark and so deep, gaze unwavering, it, it could; he sees—

“You were,” Eddie grasps back to their meeting, to finding Steve at the first; “you said,” Eddie slides his, replays the first words they exchanged: “disoriented.”

Steve nods, looks pleased to have been remembered so clearly—as if another option existed at all.

“I followed a few schools of fish for company, some with poorer senses of direction than I’d banked on, more dizzying circles were involved than I’d have preferred,” Steve confirms wryly, but then? Then those words snap another puzzle piece into place because:

“Fish,” Eddie exhales, marveling again; “that’s how you—“

“You would not wish to eat the young, anyway,” Steve waves a hand but doesn’t hide a little grin. “Your taste is to those in the lifecycle that have mostly lived out their own purpose, and are then best suited to serve on last purpose,” then he flattens his hand to Eddie’s chest purposefully as he intones: “sustaining you.”

And somehow the magnitude of two things strike Eddie hard in just those words: this is an elemental force responsible for balance among so many things, the lifes and deaths of no just beings but of…so much of the world Eddie knows, and that elemental force is sat before him, cradling him close, valuing him in honest care—him, Eddie fucking Munson—and then second: Eddie loves him so fiercely, the love alone could kill him, and he’d be grateful for the privilege of a death at its hands.

“The gold?” Eddie presses, more pieces falling into place despite world-tilting revelations. “The jewels?”

And Steve just smirks, tilts his head slyly:

“Darling, imagine,” he almost drawls; “would the Ocean not know intimately, where every shipwreck sank?”

And it’s too much, the casual teasing, like the sharing of a secret, the little intimacy, the growing feeling in his chest where his human heart is finding footing, and the Ocean wreathed around it crests in jubilation through his veins: it’s too much.

“I’ve loved you since I was small,” Eddie breathes out, shakes his head slow because no words could say it truer, but they’re far too small nonetheless.

“I know,” Steve nuzzles the cook of his neck; “you piqued my interest from the start. Such conviction. Such feeling. I’ve known worship, but you,” and Steve’s lips graze his skin and Eddie’s pulse skips, and Steve kisses the line of his neck gentle, swift and soft.

“You loved, and you did not waver, or age beyond it,” Steve’s nose brushes Eddie’s hairline as he shakes his head then, and Eddie can feel his awe in it; “it was sustained, like a part of you that you did not outgrow but grew around,” and Steve’s hand curls over to Eddie’s chest again, presses with meaning: “intrinsic. Embedded in you as a rule.”

Eddie breathes in; Steve’s words are like flame to the kindling of his own abandoned, unfinished—he’s ready now to give them.

“I fell in love with you the moment I pulled you onto this ship.”

Because there’s nothing for it but the truth. The fact that Steve could have taken his whole heart; because Eddie meant it the whole time that the Sea had him but to know Steve—

Eddie would deem his life well lived, just to have loved Steve, with all that he is.

Steve stares at him, lips parted, eyes so wide and then he’s reaching, scrambling Eddie’s hands into his own and pressing them between their chests again, his grip so, so strong.

“Which,” Steve marvels, there’s no other word before he heaves a deep breath, seems to gather himself a little bit where he gathers is a solemn place, too far from euphoria, where living should be.

“Eddie,” Steve speaks gently, just firmly. “I am not human.”

And maybe it’s not the appropriate reaction, but Eddie cannot stop the chuckle that bursts out from his lips.

“Yeah,” Eddie huffs fondly; “yeah, I’m seeing that,” and something in Steve does ease at that, something that twinkles in his eyes and quirks at his lips.

“I am considerably less see-through, give me some credit,” he volleys back, and even if it’s a little strained, Eddie is grateful; squeezes Steve’s hands tight.

“You are stunning in every shape and form,” Eddie murmurs, and means it: “as a given,” and he tugs at the last bit of something closer to kelp than hair at the back of Steve’s head; “that is your natural form—“

“First Form.”

Eddie blinks to be interrupted so firmly, so sure, and frowns for the confusion of it.

“What do you mean?”

Steve is silent for a few breaths, and then he starts lacing their clasped fingers, one between them other, meticulous and intertwined.

“When I came to you? I was curious,” Steve says careful, just as meticulous; “but once I found you,” and his breath catches, and the Ocean-heart still blanketing Eddie’s mortal one does the closest thing he can imagining to skipping;

“You were more than I could have imagined.”

The flush that floods Eddie’s cheeks, then, is…a profound, unprecedented thing.

“I have felt, what it means when mortals use the word love,” Steve near-whispers, but alongside the pulsebeat of the Ocean and the fumbling of blood through arteries beside, it is the clearest, most powerful wash of sound? Of >i>feeling:

“I have known it before, though very few times in all of time, a kind of love but Eddie,” and Steve tips his head to kiss their joined hands before looking up, locking his eyes with Eddie’s and somehow its a brand new sensation to stage into them, like Eddie had never seen his whole soul before? Because he’d have known it: what he sees now shines bright enough to blind but much like his heart he feels shielded, protected. Then Steve tests that protection when his next words nearly stop his mending heart entirely:

“I know now what is meant when my kind speaks of love.”

And Eddie can’t quite conceptualize what that entails, which he thinks is the point; but he can feel the echo of it in the Ocean-heart under his breastbone, tendrils almost too much to reach out for but they are of Steve so of course Eddie’s reaches anyway, no question.

“For you,” Steve breathes against Eddie’s ear; “only you.”

And Eddie has to squeeze his eyes shut not this time to save himself from the blinding light of a soul more vast than Eddie can imagine; no. No, this time Eddie has to close his eyes to keep from sobbing. It’s so much.

It is so much, and it is love beyond love and it’s for him.

“And then, I didn’t just feel it,” Steve continues, his tone turning even more dumbstruck, overflowing entirely with awe: “I knew it, returned to me,” and Steve pulls back only enough to narrow his eyes just the slightest bit, like the next thing he’ll say is monumental in ways not touched just yet—almost inconceivable.

“Which is impossible, you understand?” his eyes rove Steve’s face, imploring him to grasp the magnitude, the certainty. “It is impossible for a human to feel love as an immortal feels, and yet,” Steve considers him like an unfashionable thing, like a myth made flesh as he hardly breathes, enamored and awestruck:

“I think you taught me from the very start,” Steve’s smiles grows with every breath, breathtaking and blinding; “you impossible wonder, miracle beyond the laws of being,” he murmurs, tracing eddies gestures so gentle, so reverent:

“You loved with the endlessness of my kind.”

And Eddie…feels the gravity of the statement of it, as one impossible thing. The weight of it as truth, and just for the natural inclination to love Steve in wholeness forever, and no less…

“I felt it from the start, and, here,” Steve touches their joined hands to his own chest, Eddie’s heartbeat there a bird chasing release within and then he turns their grasp to Eddie’s chest, presses their hands him to the center: “here, I can feel it just the same. Undeniable,” he shakes his head but stares at Steve with such wonder, such unending…love.

“Impossible, but unquestionable.”

Eddie feels the tears make their way down his cheeks but thinks nothing of him. He barely breathes, cannot risk shattering this moment of perfect splendor, the kind legends are written about.

“To be with you is the most natural thing I have ever known,” Steve bows his head to the line of Eddie’s shoulder, breathes and balances there as he speaks straight into Eddie skin; “to lie with you is a gift, and a joy,” and his smiles stretches wide where Eddie can feel it, and cannot help but let his own mouth curve to match; “to love and be loved by you is in the scope of the eternal, but the shape of humankind and the form I take to do, to give and receive that, to know that, to be that,” and he glances up then, not all the way but far enough he can look Eddie straight on their his lashes:

“Just because it came after does not mean it is less precious,” he tells Eddie with such feeling; “just because it was not First does not mean it is less,” and suddenly Eddie understands. It is not about the Form.

It’s about loving that much. That…that beyond the entirety of everything.

Eddie’s breath catches more than once and he almost laughs—would, if his breath weren’t already the issue at hand—when the Ocean-heart in him prods at his lungs helpfully, in soul-deep concern, with the protection afforded him as a rule now, it seems; he almost laughs, because how is this reality? How is this his life?

How did he find a love willing to match the way he’s given all of him?

“What does it all mean?” is the way his giddy, wobbly, breathless incredulity comes out. But then it cools, dampens a little as desperation seeps in because:

“Am I,” Eddie swallows hard, still doesn’t try to stop the tears even if they’re sharper, sour;

“Am I allowed to love you?”

Steve’s eyes go wide and he holds Eddie tighter but Eddie has to speak it, he needs to ask and say the words.

“Am I allowed to have you? To >i>keep you?” Eddie chokes on the fear in him, focuses in on the constancy of the wave-beat in his chest not smothering, or downplaying the growing strength of his own human heartbeat as it thunders; just holding it, cradling it almost like it’s treasured.

It makes he feel brave enough to try and be bold enough to act like he believes he deserves either of those things; to ask one more:

“What does it mean, to keep a,” wonder, a marvel, a heart and soul too generous and depthless and enticing and beautiful for this world or any other—

“An Elemental being?”

And something in that questions softens the tightness that had started to settle in Steve’s expression at the questions that had come before and Steve leans, kisses him so light on the surface but so deep that Eddie’s pulse somehow finds, alongside Steve’s heart, a way to pound with at least half the strength of the Ocean in response.

“It means as much of forever as you desire,” Steve mouths against Eddie’s lips then pulls back only to look him straight on when he adds; “and know with everything that less time does not mean lesser feeling.”

He means it. And Eddie believes him. But.

“I don’t want less time,” Eddie’s quick to make clear, to lay his leaping heart bare: “I want all of time, but…”

He trails off, but Steve only leans back in, seals their lips again like reassurance and whispers against him:

“But?”

“I’ll age, and die,” Eddie’s voice is small as he voices the truth of it, the heartbreak at the end of the tale, but further still:

“Is it worth it for you? When my time is,” Eddie shakes his head the slightest bit, unwilling to knock Steve away even an inch; “so small?”

He might fear that the most. Losing Steve at all has already proven unsurvivable. But knowing he’s only wasting Steve’s time—

“Understand me.”

Steve is a being of unfathomable power, Eddie knows this now. But the grandeur, the imperious striking might beneath his words is…undeniable.

“No time, spent with you, is small.”

And Eddie nods, and accepts Steve’s kiss and it’s wild endless depth without question and only with exhilaration, because what more can be done, not in the face of such power.

Not when he’s suggesting, hinting at everything Eddie would ever want.

“I have never given my Heart before,” Steve’s whole hand splays out to cover Eddie's chest, now, his voice lower and a rumble; vulnerable but unafraid; “not ever.”

And there again: the stability that Eddie’s human heart’s reclaiming gives way to trembling, and the beat gets knocked about but then right there is Steve’s heart: wholly given.

For the first time. And to Eddie.

Good fucking gods—

“It would keep you, it you wished it,” Steve tells him, simple and plain again about something Eddie can already tell is about to change his entire world yet again; “you would not wither. You would stay with me hale and whole and vibrant always, until the ending of all things.”

An Elemental being. Eternal in the…literal sense.

Eddie’s flesh heart trembles. His hand goes to cover the steadier one splayed atop it, next to Steve’s own hand.

“Don’t you need it?” Because, because it’s a part of Steve, and not something simple or extraneous, no, it’s his heart—

“Only mortals need a heart inside their breast, and,” Steve pauses, tilts his head; “if you,” and he lifts his eyes, grasps the hand eddie’s not holding to both their hearts inside his chest and lists it ever so tenderly to his lips:

“If you do me the honor of letting me pledge forever, and keeping mine in your sweet breast,” Steve mouths against Eddie’s knuckles, a little bit…shy; “perhaps you’ll be unthinkably generous and allow me to keep yours.”

And fucking hell, in all the history of idiotic questions, of obvious things—

“It is yours,” Eddie drags Steve’s hand from his mouth back to Eddie's chest, both hands there to be so fucking clear: “it is yours.”

And it always was.

And Eddie doesn’t have to think about eternity, or immortality, or forever on this sort of scale. He doesn’t. Because the answer was always and will always be Steve. But once Steve’s kissed him to breathlessness once, twice, their hands still pressed to Eddie’s chest to feel the effect of their fervor on the pounding met with the immediate embrace of Steve’s heart around the whole of it, like the Heart of the Ocean itself relishes the racing of Eddie’s pulse so long as it’s there to hold it safe, and properly adored, all the whole—but once Steve kissed him thoroughly, he leans back and looks Eddie square in the eyes:

“But know this too, my most beloved,” and Eddie’s pulse skips again, and Steve’s heart rejoices again, an addictive sensation is there ever was one:

“You gave yourself to the Sea,” Steve reminds him, as if it’s a thing to ever forget; “if you live and die as your perfect mortal self, in this perfect mortal body,” Steve keeps one hand on his chest but lets the other rove across his ribs, over his arm, up his neck to cup his face:

“If then you are consecrated to me in the end, as humans on the water tend to do,” and Eddie’s heart kicks—and Steve’s holds it dear—at the subtle suggestion of how Eddie thought he lost this, lose all of this—

“I protect and keep every soul that falls into me,” Steve murmurs with the cadence of the water he is, and all the more in him beyond only that; “and you,” he traces Eddie’s lips so gentle: “you would only come home to me in the end either way, if that was still what you wanted.”

Eddie is stunned still, a little, and Steve takes the space to speak further:

“If what you want is forever, the time it takes, whatever the route or its shape, it is,” Steve smiles so sweet, so encouraging; “that is of little consequence to me outside the happiness it brings for you,” and he plays with Eddie’s bottom lip, moves his hand against his chest through the curls there in time with the thump of his human heart.

“Time doesn’t, feel the same, for me,” Steve confesses, again apologetic all of a sudden for fuck knows what reason—he is here, alive, their hearts literally belong to each other, and he’s telling Eddie it can be forever, that he would want forever—

“I only knew you were hurting so badly when you spoke to me, and I was shaped enough in this form to know your distress,” Steve confesses, and it takes Eddie a moment to put it in context: before. Hours before and yet lifetimes before, it feels so far in so many ways from here: “I focused mostly on keeping your body safe,” he adds but quickly, like he sees it as an excuse he doesn’t deserve to lean on; “I am sorry you were in such pain for so long before I was strong enough to come to you,” and that part he says, far too close to something like a failing.

“Forgive me?” and his eyes are so big and Eddie wants to laugh but he can’t, he can’t, he just needs Steve to know— “You’re alive,” are the only words that come before Eddie kisses Steve with everything he has, and presses their hands again to his unbridled pulse, hoping he’s desperate enough, and that Steve’s own heart next to the pounding can feel enough, to know the rest with absolute certainty.

“Oh, sweet angel,” Steve mouths against him, and the tone is watery; Eddie knows he feels the breadth of what Eddie needs him to know; “my angel.”

“Yours,” Eddie nods; “entirely yours,” and he kisses Steve hard, just shy of rough before he pants between them, their foreheads bowed together.

“Entirely yours, and here to feel it, to be held in your arms,” Eddie shakes his head and beams at Steve; still holds his hand right to his heart:

“There is nothing to forgive.”

And Steve gapes at him a moment before he starts to speak:

“You are a,” but he doesn’t finish, just dives back in and kisses Eddie with an abandon that Eddie suspects only the elemental beings that shape the foundations of the world can reach, and love enough to drag mere mortals to the brink of alongside them.

When they part Eddie is weightless, buoyed on a novel ecstasy, but Steve is clasping their hands against his raving heartbeat somehow all the tighter.

“The love you’ve given to me wasn’t a thing I knew I could wish for,” Steve murmurs low; “but can you feel, here?”

And somehow Eddie knows Steve doesn’t mean the rabbiting of the flesh heart, he means the Ocean-heart, and how it flawlessly anticipates and shapes itself to Eddie’s human heartbeat, dances with it like an art form: immaculate.

“It never moved like that, before you.”

And somehow hearing those words are what breaks Eddie open, and leaves him to choke on a sob and cling to Steve because…

What else do you do in the face of the impossible? In the fulfillment of your every dream?

“You not only have the heart of the Ocean,” Steve breathes against Eddie's temple now, holding him close. “You are my heart. You reshaped and remade it indelibly. No matter what you choose, or how,” Steve flattens eddies palm against its rhythm: “it will never be as it was.”

Then he nudges his nose at Eddie’s jaw until their eyes meet and he says more like a bow:

“I will never be as I was.”

And part of Eddie wants, needs to sob some more; but more of Eddie needs Steve to understand one more thing, beyond any lingering doubt:

“I surrendered myself to the Sea,” and now it’s Eddie who can speak truth plain, and simple, when they are both even if they’re also life-altering and heart-shaping and soul-making, too: “and I know you are the Sea but,” and he reaches, then, and cradles Steve’s face in both hands:

“I give myself, heart and soul, to you,” because Eddie thinks the secrets the Sea whispered to him inside shells were his heart, sure, but that was the point. Because his heart is Steve’s now, and Steve’s is his, and maybe the secret was always that secret. Eddie gave his heart to the Sea before he knew there was more beyond to give to.

The secret was always Steve, wonder beyond and above all wonders.

And here they are.

“Forever,” Eddie tells him with no hesitation; gasping a little, heart tripping a little but always into the hold of Steve’s own, a home already, and better suited than Eddie’s chest alone had ever been. “I want forever. If you want—“

And with Steve’s lips on his immediately, rapturously, giving and taking, gifting and treasuring every offering that is Eddie, only Eddie, all of Eddie—

Hell, even without any of that: Eddie knows from the Heart around his heart and the way it moves—as it never has before, and Eddie knows—to curl around him with such absolute certainty, to almost nestle against him inside his chest like he’s making a home there for always, a life eternal protecting the heart he’s stretched around?

Steve wants forever, too.

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson @estrellami-1 @bookworm0690 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @nerdyglassescheeseychick

divider credits here & here & here & here

🌊ao3 link here

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