| Sam | 27 | Aussie | Agender femme In Eternal Bisexual Panic! . . . I don't even know what I'm doing anymore, this use to be just a regular fandom blog now, its legitimate chaos. My chosen URL is becoming more and more relevant the longer I stay on this dreaded website.
“Hey,” Steve protested, “what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on,” Dustin scoffed. “When was the last time you went on a date?”
“Last night.” Obviously.
“That wasn’t a date!” Eddie called from across the room making Dustin shoot Steve a smirk that was deeply patronising.
“I paid for your dinner, we went to a movie and i kissed you goodnight,” Steve yelled back, rather pointedly and without thinking about it.
If he’d thought about it, he might have been paying more attention to the sudden silence in the Wheeler’s basement and not the way Eddie was frowning as he thought over Steve’s words.
“Alright,” Eddie conceded. “You have a point.”
“A point?” Dustin demanded voice high and squeaky and almost completely overriding Wheeler’s “You kissed him goodnight?”
“You went on a date with Eddie?!”
“Yes, Dustin, i went on a date!” Steve snapped triumphantly, completely missing the point.
“With Eddie?” Dustin squawked.
“Yes, with Eddie,” Steve confirmed exasperatedly.
“A guy.” Wheeler had an odd tone that had Steve looking at him funny.
And then he realised what was going on.
He’d just come out to the party in an argument with Dustin.
He’d just come out in an argument with Dustin to the party in the Wheeler’s basement when Robin was not around.
And maybe he should have been focusing on the whole coming out thing, and also possibly the Eddie didn’t know it was a date thing, but mostly he was just a little worried that if he didn’t immediately talk to Robin she was going to kill him for being the last to know.
The paling of Steve’s face must have been spectacular. Eddie was just the only one who seemed to realise why he was freaking out because over the top of Dustin demanding when Steve decided he was into guys he said, “You should probably go tell Robin.”
The words startle Steve awake more effectively than his alarm ever managed and he flails a bit, almost falling off the couch until he recognises Dustin looming over him, hands on hips looking extremely unimpressed.
(Later Steve will have time to be fondly amused that the gesture came from him.)
“Henderson?” he asks, blinking up at the kid with bleary eyes. “Jesus, what time is it?”
“6:30,” Dustin informs him.
“In the morning?” he croaks.
“Yes, in the morning!” Dustin snaps. “What the hell is this Steve?”
Steve is still mostly asleep, he knows he looks like a mess and he also knows that he and Dustin did not have any sort of plans that would give him reason to be waking Steve up at six-fucking-thirty in the morning. So he says, “Sleep, Henderson. It’s sleep.”
Dustin does not look amused by this. “Do you always fall asleep on the couch with Eddie?”
Steve blinks up at Dustin, confused. “What? Eddie?”
Dustin gestures behind Steve and Steve, against his better judgement, turns his head to find that Eddie is in fact on the couch behind him. Turning put him face-to-face with the other man and Steve just sort of blinks in befuddlement before wondering aloud, “Jesus Christ how is he still asleep?” Because he genuinely has no idea how anyone could be sleeping through Dustin’s sheer volume.
“That’s all you have to say?” Dustin demands.
“It’s early,” Steve complains.
“You’re sleeping with Eddie!”
“Well i was,” Steve groaned, “right up until you started shouting. Why are you even here?”
“Sleeping. With. Eddie,” Dustin repeats in case it was lost on Steve the first time.
“It’s six thirty in the morning!” Steve points out. Again. What else was he supposed to be doing at that time of day?
“Sleeping with Eddie!” Dustin repeats like a bad record, needle skipping back and forth.
Steve is too tired for this. “Make sense or go away and come back in two hours.”
“Steve,” and Dustin sounds very serious now, “are you having sex with Eddie?”
“…no?” He squints at Dustin, a little concerned about the kid’s knowledge of sex if he’s asking that when Steve is lying fully clothed and half asleep next to an equally fully clothed and still asleep Eddie.
Dustin does not find this funny. “Then what the hell is this? Why are you cuddling on the couch?”
Relieved, Steve says, “Oh, you didn’t mean that literally.” Then he shrugs. “We must have fallen asleep down here.”
“You fell asleep cuddling on the couch?” Dustin’s voice is very dry.
“…i guess?” Steve doesn’t actually know how the cuddling came about - would he call it cuddling? - but he gets the feeling he should be more worried about what Dustin is insinuating than he is. Mostly because, “Seriously, why the hell are you here so early?”
“Apparently, to catch you and Eddie snuggling on the couch,” Dustin snipes. “Is this going to be a thing?”
Steve looks long and hard at Eddie, doesn’t let himself sink too deeply into the thoughts or the fears, just looks at him and then he says to Dustin, “Yeah, probably.”
Dustin’s outrage is not faked this time and it is loud enough to finally wake Eddie.
“the education system traumatizes students it deems stupid” and “the education system traumatizes students it deems gifted” are two concepts that can and should coexist.
Eddie having a tattoo on the inside of his thigh that he cant fully really remember getting, it’s of an S.
He vaguely remembers another person being there. But it was on a night out in Indy with the guys, having successfully managed to convince them to go to a club with him (how Gareth pulled more than he did, while his underage ass was only drinking cokes? Uncertain. but Gareth discovered he’s bi so. Congrats Gareth)
Getting black out drunk, completely off his face, he remembers pulling one person while Gareth introduced Jeff and Frank to a group of lesbians he’d somehow charmed.
And that vague outline of a person who’d kissed him senseless in a cubicle in the mens bathroom, being with him when he got that tattoo. Maybe getting one for themselves too.
it’s only after the world doesnt end while at an impromptu we saved the world pool party at Steve’s McMansion, while spending an unfortunate amount of time ogling the other man’s legs in those shorts, wishing he still had that bat facing courage needed to go over there and just bite one of them. That he notices the tattoo.
an E. Right there on the inside of his thigh, just low enough that the shorts dont cover it.
holy shit.
Steve doesnt really remember where he got his first and only tattoo either.
He remembers taking Robin out to Indy after the mall went up in smoke, after the bruising and the swelling went down on his face. He remembers promising her a night out somewhere where she’d fit in the weekend before they’d start their first shifts at Family Video.
He promised that it’d be somewhere where she’d find her people.
Her parents hadn’t minded, free thinking ex-hippies that they were, they wished them a fun night, and told them not to do anything they wouldnt do. Which… okay fair. Whatever that’d be, it would be pretty extreme. Best not to do that.
Her father may have pulled him aside for a moment and made sure Steve knew with absolute certainty that if he knocked up his daughter there’d be hell to pay, but Steve had reacted with just enough revulsion and dude no she’s like my sister, because somehow trauma bonding in a secret Russian bunker high on truth serum also doubled as ‘you’re my sibling now’ bonding, that her parents were pretty sure he was just a friend.
Which was good. Their little weirdo needed a friend.
He remembers the start of the night. The promise he asked her to make after they’d snagged a room at a nearby motel to stay the night, two beds, of course. The promise that she wouldn’t ask him how he knew of the place he was taking her, because he wasnt sure he was ready to talk about it just yet.
He remembers her finding a group of lesbians who basically adopted her near the bar, him looking on in fond amusement as they then moved on to fawn over a cute little guy with nice hair definitely too young to be in there, then his friends who he introduced them all too.
His ID worked there. It always worked there. The bartender thought he was cute so of course it worked there. Bartender wasnt his type but he was easy to flirt with just enough to keep getting those drinks. Flash a smile, lay on a little of his charm, and the drinks would keep flowing.
Flowing, flowing, and flowing.
That’s when things got a little. Hazy.
He remembers a crooked grin, brown eyes, big, curly hair, a deep voice, a bathroom stall, and lips that tasted just like cheap beer but addictive all the same, the rest is kind of hazy.
He knows he woke up with Robin half sprawled across his chest and half hanging out of his bed, hers still made, him in his boxers and a gym shirt and her in an adorable set of penguin pyjamas, his leg aching.
Aaaaaand that he had a tattoo on his thigh.
Robin didn’t have one. They checked. She checked thoroughly in the bathroom. Something he breathed a sigh of relief at because that probably fell into the realm of 'doing something we wouldn’t do’ But his was just a single letter.
E.
Although he didn’t remember it clearly, and although Robin cackled like a hyena at him, in his gut he knew that somewhere out there. In the great wide world. Someone had a matching tattoo, someone matched him, and deep down, he kind of hoped he’d meet them again, clearly they’d had enough fun while drunk off their faces to think of doing it in the first place.
But… honestly… realistically? What would be the odds of meeting that guy again?
I know it’s like cringe or whatever to care about media unironically but I actually do love when you love a story so much it becomes a part of your soul
violently shaking you and screaming about how eddie thinks steve is pretty bc he’s masculine. he sees his big muscles and chest hair and hint of stubble and thinks “pretty man”. steve is man and he is pretty. he doesn’t need to be feminized to be pretty.
blood is basically the most normal thing for a sword to hunger for. if a sword gained sentience and started asking me for blood i’d be like yeah i thought you might say that
Honestly, fair. If I gained a sword that started to whisper to me in the night, begging to slake it’s immortal thirst for Pepsi Max, I’d have some questions for the smith.
