#this is not exactly 4am floaty fic but i do intend to get a couple more hours of sleep tonight so you’ll excuse me i hope

[flowercrowngods]

Prompt that has been eating my brain: Eddie finishes his book, and he hasn't shown it to anybody. Steve knows about it, but he doesn't really know much about it at all. And of course, dedications and acknowledgements. Eddie has been wandering around the apartment grumbling to himself for the best part of two weeks trying to figure them out. What if they fall apart the week after the book comes out? What if they end up hating each other? What if every time he goes to sign his name he's reminded of the boy he lost? I need your thoughts because you have better thoughts on this than me.

you have better thoughts on this than me what the fuck dude 😭 i mean i do have thoughts. i hope they get the bats out of your brain

“Eddie,” Steve’s voice gently breaks through the eerie silence that has oh so mockingly settled in the room. It’s silent because Eddie is staring at the screen, unmoving and petrified. He’s been staring at the word Acknowledgements for so long it has long since stopped looking like a real word, the concept disintegrating while its meaning is only gaining weight, cutting off his throat at the worst of times and making him frown in frustration at the best of times.

The book is finished. It’s done. How come he’s only hitting the hardest part now? It’s fucking laughable.

“Babe,” Steve says again, and this time there’s a warm body at his back, leaning into him until arms wrap around his shoulders and Steve’s cheek comes to rest on the crown of Eddie’s head. “Come to bed,” he whispers, and Eddie leans back briefly, soaking up Steve’s warmth.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he murmurs.

“Liar.” Steve huffs against him and then shifts to press a kiss to Eddie’s hair before moving back to his original position. He must be looking at the screen, and Eddie wants to reach out and hide it, close the windows, shut it all down. “I thought you were done?”

“I am,” Eddie says and sighs.

“But?”

“But I’m being stupid about it.”

Steve makes an unhappy noise and wraps his arms tighter around Eddie. “Wanna talk about it?”

Does he? He doesn’t, it’s stupid, it’s literally not a big deal. He’s just all up in his own head about acknowledgments, because that’s like breaking a wall. Writing a book can be all about the characters, about the setting, about the message or the journey or whatever.

But when you open a book and on the first page it says, For Anna, then that makes it a real thing that happened in this world. It’s not isolated anymore. And when you finish the book and are about to close it, but then it says, I’d like to thank a whole bunch of people without whom this would not have been possible, then that’s sort of the most mortifying thing Eddie has ever had to confront.

Because what if he thanks Dustin but then something happens and they stop being important to each other? His name will forever be in this book, immortalised as long as people know to read these letters and words. What if he dedicates this book to Steve and then they fall apart? Eddie doesn’t want to build the immortality of art on the fragile pillars that are his heart and soul.

But he can’t tell Steve that. Because Steve would look at him, cup his cheeks and tell him not to acknowledge him like that, then. Easy as that, Eddie, now come to sleep.

But it’s not easy as that.

“That depends,” he says at last. “Are you feeling particularly philosophically inclined tonight?”

“Hmm? How’d you mean?” Steve sounds sleepy and wonderful, and Eddie wants to wrap himself up in it. Wants to write a thousand more books and dedicate them all to Steve, because even if it doesn’t last, it exist right now. Their love is worth to be immortalised for what it is.

Okay, maybe he does want to talk about this pretty badly.

“Let’s get ready for bed and then will you let me ramble at you until we fall asleep?”

“Hmm, deal,” Steve says, smile evident in his voice, and he presses another kiss to Eddie’s hair before they head into the bathroom to get ready for bed together.

When Steve pulls the covers over them and cuddles into Eddie’s side, they spend a few minutes just basking in each other before Steve pulls back to look at Eddie.

“Okay, what’s got you so up in your head, hm?”

Eddie explains. And Steve listens. And he doesn’t take Eddie’s face in his hands to tell him not to worry about mentioning him. Eddie is glad he doesn’t.

“There’s enough of everyone I know in these characters already, but still somehow this is different. What if you’ll hate me some day? What if we don’t make it? I don’t… I don’t want to immortalise something that will cause me pain. But I don’t want to run from it either, because no future version of either you or me could change what we have right now, right this second. You will always have been lying next to me just now. Nothing can change that. So it’s really not a big deal, but…”

“But it sort of is,” Steve finishes for him, and Eddie sags into the mattress a little because Steve understands.

If not everything, then the part that matters.

But Steve isn’t done yet, and he has tis thinking face on, the rare one that allows Eddie to lie back and listen as his Stevie will be the one with the rambles tonight.

“I get why you would obsess over that, but I think you might know the answer already, too. And maybe you’re running from that? Because no matter how hard you try, you can only ever immortalise the present. Or the past. But you can’t do that with the future. So what you have to do is to hope and to trust and to try.”

He intertwines their fingers and Eddie pulls him close, nudging Steve to lay his head on his chest the way he loves to do even as he continues talking the thoughts right out of Eddie’s head.

“I mean, obviously I can’t promise you that we will last forever. I wish I could, but time and life are just too tricky to be recklessly challenged by such promises. But I can promise you that no one will leave you because you loved them hard enough to put it in black ink on a paper in the back of your first ever book, Eddie. I know it’s terrifying to communicate to the world that you care about people and to hope that they care right back, but in the end that’s what… That’s what got you to write a book, isn’t it? You talk, very dramatically at times by the way, about the relationship between art and love and life. Obviously, writing the book is art, influenced by life and love. There is no shame in framing your art in a little bit of life and a little bit of love. With the dedication and the acknowledgements. Because you’re you. And you’re loved and you love. No future will change that. Maybe the people will vary, but what you immortalise aren’t necessarily the people themselves. You immortalise for yourself a reminder that good things exist in your life.

And when they leave? They’ll be replaced. And maybe you’ll have a collection of acknowledgements one day. Of all things good. All things life and love and family. And, I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s too bad. Mortifying, sure. It makes you vulnerable, definitely. But most good things do when they’re worth being acknowledged.”

It still baffles him an unfair amount, time and time again, how existential Steve can be sometimes. How much he listens to Eddie to use his exact terms, how much he understands from the barely intelligible mutterings and ramblings that Eddie loses himself in almost immediately, getting all wrapped up in the golden thread until there’s no unwinding anymore and he has to give up.

Buts it’s fine if he gets it all twisted because Steve will be there, right there by his side, and carefully disentangle Eddie’s limbs with a confused little frown because to him it all makes sense somehow, and he doesn’t really understand how Eddie got here.

So when Steve says all of this, Eddie feels gutted. He feels seen. He feels a bit stupid for worrying so much. The weight on his chest is lifted and the obsessive worrying that has made his head all fuzzy is retreating.

Can it be so easy? Can it just be a collection of who he is, whom he loves and who cares for him enough to let themselves be immortalised by a shapely blotch of ink? Can it be okay in the end? Can it be that sixty years down the line, Eddie looks through all his books and reads the dedications and acknowledgements, and think kindly of everyone?

The image makes him long for that kind of peacefulness. A serenity, a love, a lifetime acknowledged.

“No, that’s not so bad at all.”

Eddie’s eyes begin to sting for some reason and he wraps his arms tighter around Steve. A silence settles between them that tastes a lot like freedom.

“Hey, Stevie?”

“Yeah?”

Eddie swallows and smiles into the darkness of their room. “I think I’ll dedicate my first book to Wayne.”

A happy hum reverberates through Eddie’s chest, and Steve, half asleep by now, says, “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

“Thank you, Stevie.” For being the smartest person I know. For loving me. For acknowledging.

#steddie #steddie fic #stranger things #this is not exactly 4am floaty fic but i do intend to get a couple more hours of sleep tonight so you’ll excuse me i hope #okay it’s a written between midnight and 1am floaty fic. is it even floaty? just steve being existential smart #dio words #at this point i’m writing all these weird little fics for your eyes only and you might be the only one who reads them but that’s fine 🤍 #we’re both lucky i didn’t include the ‘almost acknowledged’. wasn’t ready to spiral again lmao i should sleep